


Visitation

by McFearo, meanoldauthor



Category: Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Developing Relationship, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, Life after the Legion, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Game(s), Rebuilding, Vignettes, courting, growing relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-04 23:48:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 27,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25424911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/McFearo/pseuds/McFearo, https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanoldauthor/pseuds/meanoldauthor
Summary: After the war, after the battle in the East, Marius finds a fellow former Legionary living in self-exile, struggling to rebuild his life after losing everything he knew and held dear. Although wary of his intentions, as well as of the prospect of gaining another friend only to be disappointed once more, Dixie -- formerly known as Damianus -- reluctantly accepts Marius' help and companionship, and over a series of visits they grow ever closer.
Relationships: Original Male Character/Original Male Character
Comments: 8
Kudos: 29





	1. Visit One

**Author's Note:**

> This first chapter is a short by Mean Old Author that I ultimately ran away with and created twelve whole vignettes of these two idiots getting cozy with each other.
> 
> Set in the main universe of their [Mean Old Lady series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/271789), with my Dixie guest-starring in that setting as an AU version of himself (but really, in our hearts, any version of Dixie that gets love and support is the real Canon Dixie goodness and we just ignore the true bad-ending Canon for him where everything hurts).

“We’ve had thefts, recently. A human, we think, taking things like food and medicines.” Calamity tidied a few tools on her desk as she spoke.

“Let me guess,” Marius said. “You want me to get them to stop?”

“What? Oh, no,” the ghoul said, flapping a hand. “They leave caps behind every time. But we haven’t seen any sign of them lately, some of us are getting worried. They’re a…bit of a town pet, at this point.” She smiled a little sheepishly, the flaking skin on her cheeks crinkling. Marius tried to keep his face politely neutral. “They don’t cause trouble, leave payment, never take more than they need. Skittish, too, they won’t take things we leave out for them special. Might be scared of poison, some of the Nightkin are muttering about it. They don’t like being given the slip.”

Marius nodded. It wasn’t the sort of work he was expecting—the super mutants in the village sometimes asked him to run errands down into the desert, where they still weren’t fully trusted, or had odd repair jobs they couldn’t do themselves. It was a busy enough place, now, with Calamity administering a cure for the Nightkin’s mental illness.

He reached down to stroke Ori’s ears as he thought. “I’ll have a look,” he said at last. “Do you have any other leads?”

She shrugged. “Found a few prints. Adult human, not too large. Probably not a ghoul, they took some Rad-Away once. One of the mutants said they spotted tracks behind the lodge, heading higher up the mountain, but they got lost in a bit of weather.”

“I can work with that,” Marius said, pushing away from the table and slapping his leg. “Come on, Ori. Get your nose on.”

* * *

Marius tucked his hands under his arms as he walked, hunching up to hide his face in the collar of his jacket. Ahead, Ori was still sniffing at the path, tail whisking occasionally as she caught the trails of small animals cutting across it.

He kept his eyes open, sweeping the snow for signs of life. The snow was powdery, too much so to hold a solid print—but he slowed at a stretch that had been subtly disturbed, heaped up rather than blown into a pile. Crouching with the lowering sun behind him for a better look, he saw the strokes of a broom or pine bough, the tracks swept away. Following the line of them, they led into a stand of pines, snow knocked loose from the lowest branches.

“Ori.” His voice was low, but she spun to look at him and perked up, eyes bright. He gestured at the trail, drawing a line from where she was to the pines. “Search. Human.”

She woofed gently, tail wagging vigorously as she paced along it. It didn’t slow as he followed, and she sped up as they came to a break in the trees. Marius called her back with a soft _“Wsht”_ noise, and she doubled back on herself to walk at his heel. He grabbed a stick to probe at the snow, watching for tripwires at foot and head height, pausing every few steps to listen.

Nothing, save the call of birds moving in the trees. The pines gave way to a clearing, and Marius looked up at a cabin built into the mountain slope, broad windows with the glass intact catching the sun, a wide fire pit on the patio below it. The doors were intact, with nary a hastily-nailed board in sight, and one smaller window on the ground floor had been neatly replaced with plywood. A bank of solar panels looked to be in good condition on the roof, and snow had melted around the chimney.

A gorgeous place, honestly, and in better condition than it had any right to be, without someone looking after it.

Marius kept hold of his stick, headed for the fire pit. Fresh ashes had blown around in the bottom, and he took a little wood from a pile under the building’s overhang to lay a small fire, digging through his pack while he waited.

The stones of the fire pit had barely warmed enough for him to sit by the time he heard snow squeaking under someone’s boots. At his feet, Ori raised her head from where she’d hidden it under her tail, all her feet tucked in, forming her own little cocoon of warmth in the snow. Marius murmured for her to stay put, and he settled more comfortably as he waited for the cabin’s owner to come into view.

He took a different route in than Marius, coming from upslope. Head down, towing a sled behind him, he didn’t look up until Marius coughed. He was charging for the pines as soon as Marius got a glimpse of his face, eyes wide over a scarf, overgrown hair poking out under the fur trim of his hood.

Marius blinked after him, not moving. “Something I said?” he asked Ori. She had her head up still, watching, and sneezed before hiding her face again. He tossed a little more wood on the bonfire, putting his hands back under his arms as the sun continued to sink. After a few minutes, the heard hesitant rustlings coming back upslope, he he didn’t look directly at the ragged figure watching him from the trees. “I’m not here to hurt you. I just want to talk.”

The stranger skirted the clearing, keeping his distance as he sized Marius up, as Marius did in turn. He had an oversize pre-war parka on, a threadbare scarf at his neck and mismatched gloves poking out of the sleeves of the coat. His boots were barely warm enough for the weather, and he had tied strips of cloth to his legs, starting to get soggy with snow. He said nothing, sidling back to his sled, and didn’t look away from Marius as he bent to pick up the rope.

“They sent me up from Jacobstown,” Marius said, as he started to back away. The man froze. “They noticed you’ve been gone. I was asked—”

“I never stole anything.” His voice creaked from disuse, and Marius heard him cough before pulling scarf down, revealing a roughly trimmed black beard. His voice was marginally clearer as he said, “I never stole anything. I left payment.”

“I know,” Marius said, voice reasonable. “But you haven’t been back in a while, and some of them were getting worried about you.” The man’s eyes narrowed. “You’d only taken food and medicines, things you needed. Are you doing okay without supplies from the village?”

The hand holding the rope had dropped, slowly, unconsciously relaxing. He stared at Marius a moment longer before saying, quietly, “I ran out of caps.”

Marius nodded. He rubbed his hands together, and glanced back at the nearly-out fire behind him, and the pot he’d propped up on a fender. “I have more squirrel stew warmed up here than I can eat. Can we go inside and talk?”

He let him into the lower level, reluctantly. He lit a large stone hearth, building up a roaring fire from the wood out of the sled. Ori sniffed at him as he passed, shuffling firewood indoors and getting bowls from another room, and Marius caught him offering his hand for inspection before stroking at her neck. Marius relaxed at the sight of it. She was better-tempered than most Legion-bred dogs, but would never accept a touch from anyone with hostile intent.

The room was cozy, as clean as anyone could hope, even if the hangings on the walls were dusty, the rugs worn and stained. But it had been a luxurious home, once upon a time, with rough-stone walls and high ceilings, the furniture of natural-looking wood and plush cushions. Peering around the corner as he dished out the stew, Marius even made out a grand-looking dining room, a chandelier of deer antlers hanging above the table.

“Why are you actually here?”

Marius straightened from his seat on the hearth, looking at him. The man was perched on the arm of a chair, ready to run, but he’d pulled his hood and scarf down. A scar stood out white across the bridge of his nose, a couple earrings barely visible in his shag of coal-black hair. It looked like he hadn’t cut it—maybe even combed it—in months, a frizz of broken ends framing his head. His beard, at least, looked like it had been hacked off with a knife recently. The eyes above it were younger than he expected, around Marius’ age, and a piercing gray that made him want to look aside. He held the bowl Marius had handed him warily, like even the smell of it might be toxic.

“I’m just checking in,” he said, taking a bite of his own food rather than look at him. “You’ve got people worrying about you, and it seemed like you might need help. You can tell me to leave, if you really want, and I’ll let you be. But I’m willing to help you out. We can talk about it before anyone makes any decisions.” The man gave him and his food an inscrutable look, and he hesitantly tasted his own meal. “I’m Marius. What’s your name?”

His eyes flickered at the name, but it was a long moment before he said, warily, “Dixie,” and pressed his lips thin. He took another bite of stew, deliberately slow, like he was forcing himself not to bolt it.

“I have more food that I can leave for you,” Marius said. “That and—”

“I can’t pay,” Dixie said, abruptly, a man who had clearly not held a conversation in weeks. He almost took another bite of stew, but stopped himself, lowering the bowl. “I’m sorry. I don’t have any way to…”

“You don’t have to pay,” Marius said, gently. “Eat, it’s alright. But I have medicines that I picked up in town that are yours to keep, Rad-Away and stimpaks.”

“No stimpaks.” That same shortness, but this time, it was followed but a shade of panic as his eyes widened.

Marius took his time scraping out his bowl, and set it on the floor for the patiently waiting Ori. “Were you a Legionary?” Dixie didn’t answer, looking at the floor. “So was I,” Marius said, into the silence. “And my brother. And a dozen other men I know making lives in the Mojave now. Not everyone out there likes it, sure, but what they don’t know won’t hurt them.”

A look crossed Dixie’s face, a there-and-gone flash of skepticism and disgust. Of self-loathing.

Marius took a deep breath and let it out slow. He knew that one.

“You’re not alone,” he said, voice low. “Well, I mean…” He gestured out the window, with a view of the twilit pines. Instead of speaking, he let his eyes drop, watching Ori pin down the bowl with a paw to keep it from sliding as she finished licking it clean. “I’ll leave what food I brought for you,” he said at last. “I’ve got a little healing powder, it’s yours. I can be back in a couple days with more.”

“I don’t want—” Dixie’s mouth tightened, and he stood, folding his arms and turning his back on him—but not leaving.

“Then I’ll leave it all here and you can decide what to do with it. Throw it out, trade it. I don’t care,” Marius said, lining up a row of canned goods and fresh food on the stone. The Rad-Away and healing powder followed, and he stood. “But I’m not carrying it down the mountain. Cans get heavy.”

He had his pack back on and jacket zipped by the time Dixie said, “It’s getting dark.”

“I’ve traveled in worse,” Marius said. He gave him a nod, and headed for the door. “I’ll see you in a few days, Dixie.”

“It’s more dangerous than you think out there. Especially if the snow starts again.” Marius turned. Dixie was watching him now, arms still folded, but his frown wasn’t as thunderous. “And your dog will get cold.”

“Ori,” Marius said. She perked up at her name, and looked from him to Dixie, all attention.

“Ori,” Dixie repeated, holding his hand out for her again. She sniffed it and sat, putting her paw in his gloved hand. He smiled, even if it was instantly quashed as he let go. He looked over at Marius, still standing by the door, and glanced away. “There’s a bedroom down here. I’ll find you an extra blanket.”

“Thank you,” he said, quietly, as he headed for the stairs.

The room was bigger than he expected, and he settled in for the night after Dixie showed him how to work the heater in the corner. Ori curled up with him regardless of the extra warmth, and he felt her wake once or twice in the night, the space around them unfamiliar.

He woke in the morning to a quiet house, and Marius stood at the bottom of the stairs a moment, unsure if he had been implicitly invited up as a guest. But there was a ringing, empty silence to the place, and the sled outside the lower door was gone. Rather than intrude, Marius gathered his things to leave.

He glanced at the hearth as he passed. The food and medicines were gone, a pair of wooly gloves in their place.

Marius smiled as he took them, and let Ori out first before heading back to town.


	2. Visit Two

He nearly jumped out of his skin when there was a knock at the door, and immediately ducked to get out of sight of the windows, so quickly he knocked his papers and charcoal to the floor. He abandoned them there to hide behind the kitchen bar, his heart hammering in his chest even as he had a good idea who it was. Maybe.

And if it wasn't? Images flashed through his mind, wild imaginings of an angry crowd come with guns, come to put him on a cross.

He'd deserve it.

The knocking sounded a second time, a little louder. He crept around the kitchen counter, sniffling, and moved cautiously to the dining room doorway to peer around. Through the glass front door he could see the silhouette of a man standing sidelong to him, peering off into the trees, his black hair pulled back in a short ponytail. A dog wandered about the porch, sniffing around after his comings and goings and the tracks of whatever wildlife had wandered up now and then.

He took a deep breath and wiped his face. What did he want this time?

The man had started back down the steps when he opened the door a crack. He stopped and turned back to him. Damianus stood there in his thin, threadbare sweater and too-large jeans, bare feet, feeling pathetic as Marius glanced him over. Ori perked up and began trotting his way.

"What is it?" he croaked, curling his fingers around the door as if he'd try and throw it open on him.

He gestured at Damianus' feet, and he looked down to see three small satchels sitting there. "Just meant to bring you more healing powder, like I said I would. Are you okay?"

No, he wasn't. "Fine."

Marius looked at him, away, back again with a diffidence. "You sure?"

Damianus wiped his face again and nodded jerkily. "Fine," he said, voice thick and wobbling treacherously. "I'm—I'm fine."

Marius nodded, visibly unconvinced. Ori stopped beside him, looking up at him, and Marius glanced down at her as if she might break the silence for him. Damianus bent to pick up the satchels, keeping the two of them in his line of sight.

"Is it okay if we come in and warm up a little bit?" Marius asked slowly.

He could just say no. It would be rude, after all he'd done for him, but he could. What would he do then? Leave. Maybe never come back, since he was rude, and maybe part of him wanted that: for Marius to leave him alone. The rest of him, from his sore eyes to his knotted throat, protested.

He wanted to be left alone. He didn't want to be alone. There was no winning, really.

In lieu of an answer, he sniffed and turned to carry the satchels inside, leaving the door open behind him.

As he carefully put the healing powder in the bathroom cabinet with the others, he could hear the clatter of dog claws on the wooden floor in the foyer, the thump and scrape of boots kicking snow off on the threshold and wiping what was left on the runner. He lingered in the bathroom a moment, leaning on the counter and peering at his own shaggy reflection, listening to the scuff of fabric as Marius took off his coat, the sound of Ori padding from room to room. Non-silence, in contrast to the last few days alone. The last… however long, before that. Months, years.

His eyes and nose were still red. He took a shaking breath and tried to hold it down, lock it all down under a grim mask.

_ Don't. Just don't. Not in front of another man—another  _ Legionary _. Get it together. _

He found Marius sitting uncomfortably on the edge of a chair before the fireplace when he came back out, and Ori padded over to sniff at him and get a scratch hello. "Make anything good with what I left last time?" he asked, not meeting his eyes when Damianus glanced in his direction.

He rubbed a hand over his face and shrugged. "Just heated it."

"Yeah? Not much of a chef?"

Damianus shook his head. "'S women's work," he said automatically, and Marius scoffed a little. "What?"

"There's no 'men's work' and 'women's work' out here," he said, too patiently. "You have to do it—"

"What do you want me to say?" Damianus snapped. "I can feed myself, it doesn't have to be fancy. No one taught me fancy, because it was ' _ women's work' _ . So what do you want me to do about it?"

"Nothing. I'm sorry." Marius ran a hand over his hair, sighing and looking towards the kitchen, anywhere but at him. "I can show you how to cook a stew. It's easy, good for you, tastes good… would that be okay?"

"... What do you want from me?" Damianus asked, in place of an answer.

They stared at each other, each just missing the mark of the other's eyes. "I want… for you to be okay."

"Why? What do you get out of it?"

"I don't know." Marius shrugged at him, looking down. "Nothing, really. Just knowing you're doing alright for yourself. Is it that hard to believe someone cares?" He said nothing for a long moment, and Marius nodded into the silence, slowly, a kind of understanding writ on his face. "Offer stands. About the stew."

There was a longer silence as he thought it over.

He came to the conclusion that he didn't stand to lose much, anymore.

"Stove works in the kitchen," he said, gesturing to the door. "Everything's electric. Solar power, I think."

Marius nodded and stood.

* * *

"So what did you do to make caps, before you came up here?"

Damianus looked up from his work chopping vegetables, while Marius seared the chunks of meat—gecko, maybe, he hadn't asked—that he'd had him dredge in yuca flour. Already the kitchen smelled good, and his stomach was growling.

Ori laid on the floor and watched them from just where the kitchen met the sunny little nook that was separated from the dining room with a half wall. Marius tossed her a cooked piece of meat for her patience.

"Bounty hunting," he said, focusing on the potatoes.

"Yeah?"

He was quiet a minute, aware that he was expected to go on, but not sure what to say. What was the point of asking? He was still trying to figure out what Marius' game was, what he wanted out of him. He had nothing left to offer anyone, nothing to his name except his ongoing life. And this cabin, he supposed. Taking either from him would be a lot easier without pretending to care what he had to say, unless it was all some trap. Get him to admit to the crimes he'd committed and turn him in to someone. The Courier, maybe.

"I did work for the Courier, sometimes," he said at length, watching the other man from the corner of his eye.

Marius froze. "Ah," was all he said for a moment, and Damianus took note, wondering if he'd been right—if he'd caught him in his plot. "You… worked for her personally?"

"No. Reported to her bots, mostly." He eyed him. "Why?"

"Why bounty hunting?" Marius asked then, and Damianus huffed a breath out of his nose. Avoiding the question. Fine, then.

He offered up the cutting board full of diced potatoes, and Marius dumped it in with the meat. He started on the carrots next. "Don't know much else but—fighting. I was trained up as infantry."

"Which campaign were you in?"

"Why does it matter?" Damianus snapped.

Marius shrugged at him, calm. "It doesn't," he said, "I'm just making conversation. Soon as you finish those they can go in the pot too." He pointed to the nearly chopped carrots. "Then we just need a couple cups of water. Beer would go well, too, or wine—is there any around here? It's a nice place, seems like the kind of place people who drink wine would have lived in."

Damianus nodded hesitantly, gesturing to the cabinets. When it became apparent no more meat was forthcoming, Ori stood from her vigil and padded off to lay on the couch in front of the fireplace.

"What do  _ you _ do?" he asked, as Marius dusted the label off of a dark green bottle.

"Odd jobs," he said, without looking up. He dug in his pockets until he produced a battered red multi tool and unfolded a corkscrew from it, working it into the cork on the bottle. "Whatever's paying and seems useful."

"So you're a mercenary."

"If you want."

"Any good jobs lately?" Damianus asked.

"Well," Marius said, giving the wine a sniff and a taste—a healthy one, at that—before pouring it into the pot. "Someone at Jacobstown asked me to check up on their local raccoon, and it ended up I met this quiet guy who lives alone in a cabin and seemed like he could use some help."

"Maybe he didn't," Damianus said hoarsely, staring at the bottle Marius held out to him. "Maybe you were imposing."

"Naw, he'd probably ask me to leave if I was. Not let me into his kitchen and talk with me while I made him dinner." He gestured a little with the bottle. "I think maybe he… could use a friend. And some wine," he added, gesturing again. "No pressure, but Caesar isn't here. You look like you could use a drink."

He took it tentatively, staring at it in his hands.

"Go on. The way you're watching me, you'd have seen if I put poison in it," Marius teased, moving to fill a large measuring cup with water from the sink. Damianus had had to run the taps a while to get the sediment from settled pipes out of it, and he left them dripping at night to keep them from freezing through, but it tasted like clean well water. Even if he still took rad-away sometimes to be sure.

"It  _ is _ poison," Damianus muttered, but he put the bottle to his lips anyway, conscious of the fact he was drinking after him—but he didn't wipe the mouth of the bottle first, not where Marius could see him fussing over it. It didn't do to make too big a deal of it.

He made a face after his first mouthful. "And it tastes like crap," he grumbled, before taking another drink.

"It's an acquired taste," Marius laughed, pouring water into the pot. "But the taste is only half the point." He dug around in his bag that he'd set up on the counter, and started drawing out small satchels that he pulled powders and leaves from, dropping them into the simmering stew pot. "Spices," he said when Damianus eyed them suspiciously. "Trust me, you'll be glad for them. I'll take the first bite if you don't trust me."

Damianus nodded slowly. He could see the weapons Marius carried—probably he didn't need to use stew to kill someone if he had a mind to.

It ended up being true, what he'd said about the wine and the spices; after Marius took the first bite, Damianus tried a bit of his, and had to bite down on the urge to make a noise of gratification. 

He'd eaten better in Marius' two visits so far than he had in years.

They sat at the bar with a stool between them, trading the wine bottle back and forth. The conversation felt no less awkward, but Damianus found that with food and wine in his belly he was a little more comfortable answering Marius' questions. "New Mexico, originally," he said. "Around White Sands. You?"

"Nowhere in particular. We traveled year 'round. Did you like it there?"

"Yeah. Sort of." He took another drink, and passed the bottle back. "Everything is kind of tainted by growing up in the Legion, I don't really remember anything else. But I think I miss the place, and some of the people. Not the life, obviously." He scraped one last spoonful out of the bottom of the bowl as he added: "Place I miss the most is the town I was born in, Cloudcroft. I got to see it a few times in training when we went up in the mountains."

Staring around the cabin, out the windows to the snowy pines, he could see it. "The Legion razed it. It was all just burnt ruins by the time I went up there, and I don't really remember much about my life there before. It was a lot like this place, though. It's why I came up here when I couldn't—" He trailed off, folding his arms on the bar. 'Couldn't' lots of things. Couldn't fit in anywhere, couldn't belong. Couldn't take it anymore.

Papers rustled in the silence, and Marius asked suddenly: "Are you an artist?"

Damianus' blood ran cold as he looked over to see Marius straightening up from having bent to gather the loose papers on the floor. He'd forgotten them, with the interruption of a visitor.

"Who is she?" he asked curiously, holding one up.

Damianus snatched it out of his hands, tearing off a corner caught in Marius' fingers when he was too surprised to let go. "That's not for you," he bit off, standing.

"Okay," Marius was saying, back to that careful, patient tone, as if coaxing an injured animal, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry."

Damianus hissed a breath out of his teeth, back turned to him. "That's all you've done since you got here."

His eyes stung again as he looked down at the page, at the many faces staring back up at him. All the same face, over and over, slightly different each time and so similar to his, but wrong. Each one wrong. His vision blurred and he scrubbed at his eyes. Not now. Not in front of another Legionary.

He stormed out of the room, papers clutched in his fingers. "Forget it," he tried to snarl, but his voice quavered—he all but ran up the stairs to the room he'd claimed as his own, slamming the door shut behind him in his rush.

It was a while before he heard the front door open and close, followed by footsteps thumping down the porch stairs. Marius left without another word, glancing back only once—while Damianus watched from just out of sight of the bedroom windows. Ori at his heels, he trudged out into the snow and was gone.

Just like that. Of course.

It was a self-fulfilling prophecy, wasn't it? He stared down at the papers strewn around him on the bed, his mother's face but wrong a dozen times. Couldn't pretend it wasn't his own doing. The loneliness. Not when he was who he was, nothing but reasons to stay away. He didn't leave the room for the rest of the day, lying listlessly on the too-large bed and staring into the corners.

He shouldn't have driven Marius off.

He shouldn't have let him inside in the first place.

Night came, and he couldn't sleep for thinking about it.

Eventually he was hungry enough to venture back downstairs, in search of the last can of food Marius had left for him—he'd avoided the stewed tomatoes, but as a last resort he didn't have room to complain.

The cabin was oppressively quiet for having had life in it hours ago, the sound of his footfalls padding down the wooden stairs echoing off the wide rooms and high walls like a mockery. He found the kitchen cleaned up, everything neatly back in place as if Marius and Ori had never been there, except for the wine bottle sitting on the counter with the cork screwed back in it. He could drink more until he fell asleep—why stop now that he'd started?

Reaching for it, Damianus paused as he noticed a torn corner of paper tucked underneath. It took a moment to read the scratched and slanted handwriting jammed onto the small space with his own charcoals.

_ Stew in the fridge. _

_ Back in a few days with more supplies. _

_ Sorry for earlier. _

_ -Marius _


	3. Visit Three

He was sitting on the porch next to the fire pit when he arrived, the first time he'd seen him use it. More surprising still, when he looked over and saw him hesitating on the edge of the clearing he called his name, waving a little.

"Marius!"

Marius approached cautiously. "Dixie," he said in return.

Dixie was seated on the stones ringing the roaring fire, wearing the same sweater and jeans he'd been in the last he saw him. No coat for the chilly late afternoon, which was quickly giving way to what promised to be a bitter evening. At least he had his boots on this time. His face was flushed and at first Marius assumed it was from the cold, but as he watched, Dixie took a swig of wine from the bottle and then offered it to him.

Marius took the bottle. "How much have you had?" he asked.

Ori was sniffing around Dixie's hand, and he greeted her with a delighted "Hhhey Ori!" while scratching at her ruff.

"Probably enough," he said to no one in particular, astonished.

"Do what?" Marius gestured with the bottle. "Yeah, have some. I've acquired a taste," Dixie said, smiling. He struggled more than usual with the S's.

"I can see that. How long have you been out here?" he asked, sitting down across from him at the fire pit.

"Oh, little bit. Needed fresh air, been cooped up in that room for—few days?"

"And how long have you been drinking?"

"... Few days?" Dixie said, and snorted at himself. "But I'm not  _ drunk _ drunk. Just—oh whassaword. Tipsy," he said, tipping sideways a little as if to demonstrate, though Marius didn't think he did it on purpose. "Hey, thanks for coming back. I'm glad you're back."

"You're welcome," Marius said uncomfortably, taking a big drink before he went on, "Said I would. You saw my note?"

"Yeah, yeah." He waved a hand, then reached out to take the bottle back. Marius let him have it and watched him throw back another swig—no doubt barely tasting it anymore. "Felt bad about how I acted, running you off… didn't mean it. Really. Just a lot—lot on my mind, you know? You know."

"It was my mistake. I overstepped."

Dixie waved him off again, looking into the fire.

"Do you… want to talk about it?" Marius asked slowly.

Dixie shrugged. Paused a minute, then shrugged again. Then looked up at him and smiled. "Hey, you know, you're great. I like it when you vis—visit me. I do." He reached to hand the bottle back and Marius took it. He had a feeling he was going to need to not be sober to make it through this conversation.

"I like visiting you," he said, honest enough. He wasn't very friendly—sober, anyway—but Marius had the feeling he'd come by it honestly, whatever he'd been through. "Have you really been drinking since I left?"

"There's lotta wine and just one've me," Dixie said, with a hiccuping laugh. "Just me. Been thinking about that a lot, is all. 'S quiet when you're not around."

Marius nodded, taking another drink. "That bother you?"

"Little bit." Dixie rubbed his hands together, staring into the fire. Beyond him the pale blue sky was getting deeper, red and pink in the west, and the shadows of the trees were growing long over the porch. "Never really liked being alone."

He nodded again, slower, handing the bottle back. "But you decided to come up here."

"Yeah, well. I'd be alone anywhere I go, you know? Don't really have anybody so it's just me, so it might as well be just me in a place feels like home. I guess." He looked up at the cabin. "Or you know. How home coulda felt, if I had one."

"How long have you been alone?" Marius asked carefully, feeling a little guilty. This was the most he'd ever heard him talk, and it was taking advantage of his drunkenness to hear it, but...

Dixie blew out a breath and took the bottle back at that. "Since the war," he said, holding it to his mouth but not drinking, yet. "Before that, even. I was a frumentarius, and… sent me out west, back, uuuuh… '75 I think? Yeah." Staring down into the bottle, he went on: "Last time I saw my contubernia. They went at Boulder. Then there was my mother, for a little bit, but she left." Marius blinked at that, surprised, and then again at what followed: "Few men since, one woman, but that never lasted. So, just me, since '75. If I'd been a luckier man I'd have died at Boulder with the others, but here I am." He spread his arms and gestured grandly at himself, scruffy and unshaven, in a thin sweater that hung off his shoulders. "The great Decanus Damianus. Tadaa.  _ Fuck _ him, right?" he finished, taking another drink. "Fuck him…"

"Couldn't say. Never met him." Not entirely true; the name was familiar, belonging to a grim-faced teenager with a shaved head and no few scars. Marius had seen him maybe once or twice, and never really gotten to know him.

After all… he'd been just another Legionary.

"You mentioned your mother?" he asked.

Dixie nodded. "She was a sla—a slave, at the Fort. I wen' to break her out, during the second battle." Marius' eyebrows went up, and he accepted the bottle back only to roll it between his hands as he listened. "Figured, you know… ever'one distracted. Sssskeleton crew at the Fort, Rangers across the river called to the Dam. Perfect time to get her and some others across. Didn't expect the Courier's  _ robots _ to start coming up out of the ground." He gestured to his left cheek, where a deep scar ran through his beard, from his ear almost to the corner of his mouth. "Great distraction, but I got shot in the crossfire. Barely made it across the river."

"Did she… make it?" Marius asked, eyes wide, a feeling of dread in his stomach. This couldn't be a story with a happy ending—or else he wouldn't be here now, sopping drunk and telling it to a near stranger. The conclusion was forgone, it only remained to be seen how bad the damage was.

"Yeah, she did," he said, and Marius relaxed a fraction. "I must've pass—passed out, on the road heading south. Woke up alone in a ditch and freaked out, wondering what ha' happened to her. Followed her trail all the way to the Mojave Outpost."

"And it stopped?"

"No, she'd gone on without me... And told the Rangers… told 'em a Legionary that looked like me might come looking for her. I barely made it out," he said quietly. "Ran for it."

He was quiet a while, and Marius wasn't sure what to say. In the silence he took the bottle back again, took another long drink, then another—Marius took it back and discreetly set it on the ground at his feet, out of sight from Dixie.

At length, he went on: "Tried to go back to the Legion for a bit. Thought they'd kill me. By then I didn't care. But it turned out… nobody who saw what I did survived the Courier's robots, and neither did the contubernium I was s'posed to report to at the Dam. Nobody cared I'd been gone, even enough to kill me for it.

"So I left again. Didn't really know what to do with myself, still being alive and nobody to—to care if I was or wasn't. Grew my hair and beard out so I wouldn't be recognized, laid low, did odd jobs. And I've been alone since." 

"Until now," Marius said into the silence that followed.

"Until now," Dixie agreed, sniffing a little. There were tears in his eyes that hadn't fallen yet, and Marius looked away. "Have one—one friend in the world. Two," he amended, looking down at Ori curled up at his feet.

"Are we friends?" Marius asked.

"I dunno. Think I'd like to be?"

Marius nodded. "Me too."

"Deal then. Less be friends. Shake on it," he said, reaching across the fire. Marius jumped up and swatted his hand away, and Dixie tipped sideways with an "Oh," nearly falling from his perch. He stayed like that a moment, listing to one side, arm still outstretched. Away from the fire, at least.

Marius came around to grasp his hand and give it a shake, withholding a laugh at the seriousness of Dixie's expression. "Okay. Friends."

"Okay."

"Okay." He didn't let go. Tugging on Dixie's arm, he managed to get him to his feet. "Come on, you should go to bed."

"Where's the wine?"

"You finished it."

"Aww, dang it…"

It was slow going, getting him up the stairs, then across a loft over the foyer to the door he indicated was his room. Inside was the first sign Marius had seen of Dixie actually making this place a home of his own: the walls were papered with dozens of drawings in charcoal, figure drawings and landscapes, sketches of faces. All of them lit by strings of fairy lights hanging along the walls. There was a window seat overlooking the forest canopies downslope of the cabin, and another fireplace in the corner that must have shared a chimney with the one downstairs. Piles of old clothes were on the floor beside the door to a large master bathroom, and the oversized bed was still unmade from when Dixie had last vacated it, soft green sheets and thick quilts in disarray.

He looked at the art on the wall a moment while Dixie rolled up his right pant leg and struggled to unbuckle a brace from his leg. Here was a young woman about their age, smiling, long hair caught on the breeze. There was a young man, same age, sitting pensively at a desk and looking out a window. Another young man in a cowboy hat leaning against a wall. All of them in loving detail, brought to life in the charcoal portraits, and Marius wondered who they were. Convenient models? Or the former lovers he'd mentioned?

How many people did he lose, one way or another?

"You're staying the night?" Dixie asked muzzily, and Marius looked over to find him slouched out on his bed, watching him through half-lidded eyes.

"If you're okay with it. I can use the same guest room?"

Dixie nodded slowly. Then said: "'m glad you came back." His eyes were closed now, already starting to drift off. "See you inna morning."

"See you then." He crept out, certain Dixie was already fast asleep, and carefully shut the door behind him.


	4. Visit Six

"So your whole family lives together?" He asked, feet up on the railing. They'd dragged a couch out onto the deck to watch the sunset, sharing beers Marius had carried up with him and left sitting in the snow a while to chill.

"Sort of, more or less. My mother, her husband, my brother and his two kids. There's more, the old tribe is rebuilding—I have cousins out there somewhere, walking the wastes. But here it's just those five."

"And your father?"

"Long gone," Marius said, shaking his head. "Probably for the better. For everyone involved."

"Hmm." Dixie took a sip of his beer and scratched idly at Ori, laying between them with her head in his lap. Playing favorites with the new guy, who kept threatening to keep her one day. "What's that like? The family thing, I mean. I know, more or less, the… no father, thing."

"More or less?" Marius asked.

"Don't really remember mine to begin with. I wasn't born Legion, but I may as well have been, I was so young. Everything before it is… fuzzy." He looked lost for a moment, staring into the middle distance. "Just a handful of pictures without… you know, without stories, or—or context. Like finding a pre-war photo album."

Marius nodded, looking away, wondered what that was like. To have nothing of his past, no memories that held meaning to him. To not wake up in a cold sweat, dreaming about what he'd lost.

“It’s a rare thing, to get your whole family back from the Legion. Most of it, anyway. More than most people get.”

“Yeah…”

“What’s it like?”

"A lot." Marius shook his head and looked out towards the sky. Still a vibrant blue shading darker in the east, the first tinge of gilding on the clouds to the west. "I don't go around there often. The kids are a blast, I just hate when they ask me to watch them. What do I know about watching kids? And those two are a disaster, if there's something that can hurt them in a mile radius they gravitate to it like a black hole."

"It's not that hard," Dixie said, idly rolling the bottle on the arm of the couch. "All they really need is love and patience."

"What's an ex-Legionary know about either?" Marius scoffed, glaring down into his beer. Dixie was silent, and he looked over. "Sorry. I don't mean… When did you watch out for kids?"

"Not often. Just, sometimes, when I travelled. Freeside. There are a lot of… free range children, in the city."

“And you did… what? Babysat them?”

“Brought them food, made sure they were doing okay, sat and talked with them. Kind of like you do with me, I guess,” Dixie added softly. “Sometimes people just need someone to—just, look out for them,” he said, in a tone that suggested he’d thought the better of what he was about to say at the last moment and changed it. “Especially little ones.”

“Suppose so. When it’s not imposing,” Marius said, tipping his bottle.

“When it’s not imposing.”

“Now if we could teach my mother the difference,” Marius said, and blew out a breath. “As for the kids, it’s just… I worry, you know? Every male figure in their life is an ex-Legionary, and my mother, she—I mean, suffice it to say, she did a poor enough job raising kids the first time before they were taken from her, so it’s not as though she’s that experienced either." He shook his head, looking out across the clearing. "How are those kids going to turn out? As broken as that family is, all of us. We hardly know how to  _ be _ a family. Ches is Ches, I think his personality got shot off in the Colorado. Their grandfather, he’s not without his share of damage, but might be he's the most put-together of the lot…”

"And then your mother," Dixie said. "You don't seem to like her much."

"Oh, is it showing?"

He shrugged. "I just wondered. I mean, I can't judge. I didn't get to know my mother very well before she—" he trailed off, describing the whole vast concept of her betrayal, her abandonment, with a vague flip of his hand. "No guarantee we'd have gotten on if I had. Seemed like a hard woman to get on  _ with  _ but I don't know how much of that was just how she treated me in particular."

"I can relate. 'Hard woman to get on with' is probably what they'll put on her headstone someday." He winced as he said it, just slightly, and saw the look Dixie gave him, there and gone. That 'maybe you shouldn't talk about that' look. Marius just shrugged, brushing it off with a shoulder.

"She's… overbearing. Damn what anybody else says, she always knows what's best. For the Mojave, for me," he shook his head again and toyed with the end of his sleeve. A chill wind blew through, stirring the pines and biting through his jeans. They'd have to start the fire pit soon. "She just charges in, starts telling everyone what to do. I think she can't stand not knowing what I'm up to because she can't manage how I live my life without the details. Can't control me like one of her robots—"

"Robots?"

Marius froze, looking over at him. "I, uh—that's—"

Dixie's eyes widened. "...  _ Oh _ ."

"Yeah."

"That's… yeah, I can see how that would be… difficult."

They were silent a long time. The sky was getting darker, reds and pinks overtaking the clouds as the sun sank behind the trees, turning the snow on the clearing below a deep blue with the shadows painted over it.

"You know… I thought  _ you _ were overbearing, when you showed up here."

Marius looked over, watched Dixie watching the trees. A huge raptor had settled on the upper branches of one, preening under its wing as it waited for the evening's bats to come out to prey upon.

"You thought so?"

"Sort of. You just let yourself into my life, this total stranger who knew what was good for me, and I didn't want anything to do with it." He spoke slowly, like he was arranging the words in his head well before he spoke them, to make sure they passed muster before someone else got the chance to inspect. As Marius watched him he gave an apologetic glance and went on: "Suppose I just kept waiting for you to leave. So far life has taught me that everyone just… leaves you eventually, or they were using you from the start. All they cared about you was how you could please them, and then they're gone when that's used up. That's what the Legion did, that's what Ridley did—my mother."

He was quiet a long moment, and Marius almost thought he was done, almost said something, but he saw his jaw working thoughtfully. Dixie opened his mouth a couple of times, seemed to rethink whatever he was about to say. Finally, he landed on, "It was safer, I thought, to just assume the worst about you and not let you in so you couldn't… couldn't wreck the place on your way out again. But there you were, every few days, insisting on being around, insisting on trying to help me, when I thought the thing you could do best to help me was just… leave me alone. Not get my hopes up that it could be any different than the last time, just to crush them."

"I don't plan to," Marius said quietly. "I just want to help you."

"I know. I get that now." Dixie nodded, and gave him a long look. "I'm glad you kept trying, even though I pushed back. I'm glad you're still around."

"I am, too."

They sat in easy silence, mulling that over as the sky lit up with the sun's last call, stars showing up slowly in the deepening blue.

“She thinks I should settle down.”

Dixie looked over, raising his eyebrows. “Why, do you have someone to settle with?”

“What? No, not like that, just… she thinks I’m too reckless. But it feels like if she had her way I’d be, I don’t know… stuck. She wants someone who’s not there anymore, and I’m not—I’m someone she barely knows.”

“By her choice, or yours?”

“ _ Both. _ ” Marius said, finishing his beer and setting the empty at his feet. He leaned his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands between them. “She doesn’t  _ want  _ to know Marius, and that’s just fine—I don’t have time to introduce him to her. She wants to find out where… where her baby is hiding, but he’s gone. There’s just me, whether any of us likes that or not.” He curled his lip, looking away. “And I’m not interested in playing to her fantasy of putting our life back together just as if none of it ever happened, letting mother dearest try to do it all over again because she fucked it up the first time.”

“Think I know that feeling.” Dixie leaned back with a sigh blown out through his lips, looking up as the raptor took off into the darkening evening sky. “Had enough of other people shaping who I’m supposed to be, everyone wanting their turn to decide. Only thing that remains to be seen is who I am without it, I suppose. I know who Damianus was, under the Legion. Squared away and neat, didn’t have to think about it. Dixie’s just been a lie to most people. Whoever they need him to be. Don’t know who that really is yet when left on my own.”

“Tell me about it.” He sighed out of his nose. "My brother is the same way. He disapproves of how I live, like he's doing much better. He lives close to ma and the kids, but not with them, because he doesn't know what to do with them either."

"You said he was Legion too," Dixie said, not a question.

"Yeah. He was in the middle of the last battle out in the East, with the new Legion. He expected to die there, and some days it seems like he did. Like his body's still moving but he doesn't really know what to do with the fact he stuck around after." Marius kept talking as he stood, stepping down the stairs to collect more beers from the snowdrift below the deck. He raised his voice to go on: "Or how to change. Still thinks he's a Praetorian sometimes, when he's had enough of my shit, starts giving me his commander voice as if I ever listened obediently to anybody who told me what to do."

"I did," Damianus said dully.

"It kept you alive, at least," Marius said, returning. He cracked off the bottle caps on the deck railing and handed Dixie another, leaned himself back against the railing to drink his own while standing a bit. "Me, I earned a reputation for playing all the angles. Bites me in the ass when I run into ex-Legionaries out in the Mojave. Many of them know my involvement in the war with Venator and don't appreciate it. Others, just…" He shook his head, running a hand back over his hair. "They want to talk about the 'good old days' sometimes. Sick. Like there was anything good about what we did, like I must miss my life being regimented and constantly on the line. I didn't come all the way out here for that to follow me."

"What were you loyal to?" Dixie asked.

"What?"

"If you were playing all the angles. You must have been loyal to something… someone." He wrinkled his brow, looking faintly distressed. "Not sure what to make of someone who's not."

"I was loyal to the Temple," Marius said slowly. "And when I wasn't loyal to the Temple I was… loyal to my family, above all. Just in the ways that I needed to be to get done what needed doing. Sometimes that's… not the same as what you're told, or what they want from you."

Dixie nodded. "And now?"

"Now? I'm loyal to myself, I guess." He shrugged. "Family still, too, for all that they drive me insane. But… me, when it's just me."

"Are you sure?"

Marius narrowed his eyes, bottle to his lips. "What does that mean?" he asked, voice humming through the glass.

"What does it mean to be loyal to you?" Dixie asked softly. "What needs doing for you that isn't—isn't necessarily what you just… want?"

"... I think we need more beer if we're going to get into something like that."

"That's fair. Another time, then." Dixie looked down at Ori, fast asleep in his lap, and gently pet the length of her neck with his palm.

"What about you? What are you loyal to now that you're not Legion?" Marius asked.

"I don't know." He shrugged. "Nothing in particular. But I'd like to be."

"What does it mean to you? Being loyal to something. Or someone."

Dixie thought about that a long while, not looking up until he tipped his head for another drink. "I want to give my life to someone," he said. "I always have. I just… want to give it to someone who cares for it, if that makes sense. A gift, not a sacrifice. Something that's cherished."

Marius stared, fidgeting silently with the hem of his shirt.

When the silence became uncomfortable, Dixie admitted, "... I watch too many holotapes when I'm alone."

"What kind?"

"The kind where people say stupid things and kiss." He gave Marius' smirk a look. "Look, you drink and argue with people, so you don't get to judge my vices."

"So you say."

He sat back down, tired of standing against the cold wind. The sun had gone down fully, one horizon still a pale dying blue as it faded off, the rest of the sky gone blue-black as a bruise and studded with stars.

They piled wood into the fire pit and started it burning, moved the couch a little to sit in front of it to and put their feet up to warm on the stones, the dog between them and their fingers brushing each other's in the middle now and then as they stroked her fur in the companionable silence.


	5. Visit Seven

He was walking out of Miguel's Pawnshop, his pockets jangling with caps, when someone screamed. Ori perked up, alert, and his hand went automatically to his SMG as he searched for the source: a woman in dirty coveralls, stood beside an overturned basket of corn she must have dropped coming up from the Co-op. She pointed in his direction and Marius turned immediately, looking over his shoulder for threats and finding no one behind him but startled passersby who looked as confused as he was.

But the woman found her voice, and shouted: "Legionary!"

He whipped his head back to her and found her looking dead at him. She meant  _ him. _

"Legionary! There's a Legionary! Where's—where's Meansonofabitch? Someone—" she was on the verge of tears, backing away, "someone get him! Please!"

"I'm not—" Marius started instinctively, but he could already see what had gone wrong here. He didn't know the woman's face, but it didn't matter. She knew his. Even if he'd done nothing to her, she recognized him, must have been a—

A gunshot cracked off the wall beside him and he ducked and scrambled, turning to run and calling a barking Ori to follow.

Another shot whizzed by, thudding into the meat of his upper arm as it passed, the woman's screaming growing distant even as it kept on while he sprinted away. Footsteps pounded after him, human, several—and the distant, heavy thudding of supermutant feet coming up from the rear. Not daring to look back, Marius ducked and wove through back alleys and side streets, past startled onlookers coming out to see what the growing commotion was. He zig-zagged to make a harder target as gunshots rang after him, pelting walls and asphalt around him wherever he got caught without bystanders in the line of fire. One clipped him, burning pain running through his side as he ran, and he slapped a hand over the injury but didn't slow.

The two of them led their pursuers throughout Westside, weaving between buildings and vaulting derelict cars to throw them off. The shouting never sounded far behind, but they just had to make it to the ruins of outer Vegas; they wouldn't follow them into raider territory. He ran on, ducking around an old shop front and into an alley, following the streak of Ori sprinting ahead of him, his breathing growing ragged as the chase went on and on. He didn't have time to check his injuries, but he couldn't tell if the light headedness was merely exhaustion, or blood loss.

Finally, he lost them in the ruins of old suburban housing on the edges of the Vegas sprawl—but ran a little farther to be sure, before slowing to a stop in someone's ancient lawn, one hand on his knee and the other clutching at his side. Pulling it away, he found it covered in blood.

Ori whimpered at his feet, panting, and he reached to ruffle her ears and calm her. They couldn't stop here long, just enough to tie something around the gash in his arm, pack some cloth against his side. The pursuit was lost but they were in raider territory, exhausted and injured, and Mount Charleston loomed up in the distance. It was a long walk back, giving Westside a wide berth, to get somewhere safe, find a proper doctor.

In the end, the long walk up the mountain was his safer bet to get help and lay low a while.

Wrapped as best he could manage while crouching in the shadow of a decrepit little house, he gave Ori another quick scratch and patted his knee to follow.

* * *

They'd fallen into something like a routine. He didn't like it.

Marius visited every few days, bringing him supplies, checking up, teaching him new ways to cook the slowly growing rations in the pantry into meals that tasted  _ good, _ and lasted him days if he was sparing.

He'd found he was glad for the company. Maybe they really were friends now, however drunk he'd been when they shook on it. And therein was the problem.

Every time Marius left, Damianus waited for him to come back, puttering around alone in the cabin. But every time he left Damianus told himself he wouldn't see him again, up until he did. It was almost cruel, he thought. To keep coming around, being his friend, as if it could stay that way. Dragging it out so… so he wouldn't be able to survive it, maybe, the day Marius left and never came back.

What would he do when that happened? He couldn't be alone like that again. He could barely stand being alone now, in between visits, now he remembered what it was like to sit and talk to someone, to have him seem interested in what he had to say.

Damianus lay in bed, staring at the drawings on his wall in the dim glow of the string lights. The faces that smiled back only made it worse.

Out the window, the wind shrieked through the pines and a torrent of snow fluttered against the glass, the low fire in the bedroom hearth struggling to compete with the biting cold. He couldn't sleep, not with the noise and the thoughts. It was going to be a long night. The wind carried howls and barks to him, and he listened vaguely, wondering if the nightstalkers were out in the cold. Were they warm-blooded, or not?

He puzzled over that a while, until he realized the barking was coming from near the cabin, nearly drowned out by the gusts of wind. Curious, Damianus stood and padded to the window seat, blanket wrapped around his shoulders, wondering if they were out in the clearing below. He cast around a long moment before he spotted the shape on his porch in the dark. Not a nightstalker, but a—

"Shoot," he grumbled, and limped down the stairs, hanging onto the railing. Didn't this idiot know not to wander out in a blizzard?

Damianus opened the door for Ori, cringing back from the flurry of snow that followed her through the door. She came in but danced just inside the door frame, nails clacking on the floor and paws leaving snowy prints on the runner as she barked and kept him from closing it.

"Marius?" he called into the dark.

Nothing. Ori barked again, urgent, went up on her hind legs to paw at his front.

"Where's Marius?" he asked, and she spun in place, still barking shrilly at him, tail between her legs. There was no Marius at his door.

" _ Shit _ ."

It had been years since he dressed that fast.

He left the porch light on to find his way back and followed Ori out into the snow, calling Marius' name the whole way. No one answered. She led him in a beeline, stopping only to look back and make sure he was following, and Damianus trudged after her as quickly as he could in the weather. Even down the slope, through the pines, winding among the trees, it wasn't too far; he must have been walking five minutes when she zipped off ahead of him, barking after a dark shape huddled against the base of a tree not far from Jacobstown. Damianus ran.

Marius' breathing was shallow, huddled in on himself for warmth and shivering violently, but he roused a little when Damianus shook him by the shoulders. "Marius? Marius, what are you doing out here?" he demanded, reaching to check his pulse. It felt weak against his fingers.

"Cold," was all Marius said.

"I can see that. What's my name?"

"What?"

"My name. What's my name?"

Marius stared at him a long moment, uncomprehending.

He needed to get him out of this weather.

Carefully, he coaxed his arms around his shoulders and lifted him, cautious not to jostle him too much. He'd spent long enough in the mountains; he knew the dangers.

"Ori. Home. Can you lead the way to my home?" She barked and spun on the spot, but seemed to get the idea, turning and trotting off into the woods.

The trek back was agonizingly slow with Marius shaking in his arms—thank Mars he'd stayed in shape all this time—and trudging carefully through the piled, fresh snow. The hardest part was tramping up the slick front steps and managing the doorknob, trying to reach it with the weight of Marius' legs slung over his arm. He kicked it shut behind him and carried him into the foyer, carefully setting him down in front of the fireplace.

"Okay," he said, looking him over. His clothes were soaked. "Okay. Let's get you out of that." He pulled the jacket off first; it was difficult, not least because it was Marius' instinct to ball up stiffly. "I need you to work with me," he muttered. "This is at least as weird for me as it is for you."

Jacket down, everything else to go. He paused to smooth a hand over Marius' forehead, and wasn't surprised to find his skin freezing to the touch. The warmth of the hand on his brow seemed to relax him, just a little, even as he still trembled violently. Damianus struggled him out of his shirt next, easing him upright enough to pull it up over his head and then down his crossed arms clutched tight to his chest. It stuck to him in places, and Damianus could see why: there were deep gashes on his arm and side that looked barely on the edge of 'not bleeding currently' and barely held down under strips of cloth. But nothing vital seemed injured and the bleeding had stopped for now. The snow-sodden boots and socks went next, then the pants, because getting him warm was the first priority. The injuries could wait their turn.

When he'd gotten him down to his shorts he moved to step two: blankets. Damianus all but ran through the cabin, pulling the blanket from the bed in the spare room and throwing it over Marius in passing on his way upstairs to grab the one from his own room, too. He piled them over him, tucking the edges in tight and making a burrito out of him before he turned to start building a fire. Still whimpering with concern, Ori padded over and laid atop him, slung out over his chest, and Damianus paused only to pat her and tell her what a good girl she was.

"D-Dixie," Marius muttered, barely audible under the sound of firewood clunking into place.

"Finally figured that out, huh?" he asked, arranging the pile and stuffing old newspapers into the gaps for kindling.

"What?"

He got it roaring and worried about getting him comfortable next, off the cold hardwood and stone floors. Damianus pulled the cushions and pillows from the nearby couch and laid them out on the floor next to him, then shooed Ori off long enough to carefully lift him onto them. That was all he could do for now, he thought, sitting back on the floor to watch him. He checked his pulse again and found it little better, still fluttering faintly as he shivered, confused and barely conscious. Dread settled in his gut.

Could he do more? He had no heat packs. He had hot water, but that was tricky, and risky, too much heat on cold skin or worse, sending cold blood rushing to his heart from his limbs. He wasn't conscious enough to sit up and drink something hot, and Damianus didn't want to leave him long enough to boil water anyway, not in this state.

A thought struck him, and he almost put it out of his head just as quickly. He couldn't. Not with Marius. Not with another Legionary, one he barely knew.

And yet…

Could he for his only friend?

He struggled over it a few minutes, and had nearly talked himself out of it when, sighing, Damianus stripped out of his own wet clothes and untucked a side of the blanket pile, climbing in with him. He winced at the feel of Marius' icy skin against his, at the way he trembled against him. Cautiously, he settled in as best he could, huddling close to his body under the blankets and only just fitting part of his torso onto the narrow couch cushions with him, the rest of him laying uncomfortably on the hard wooden flooring. Arms wrapped around Marius' body, he laid chest-to-chest with him, Ori curled on his other side against Marius' back.

It was the best he could do. He had to lay there as long as it took, listening to his shaking breaths and hoping it was enough.

* * *

Marius woke to Ori licking at his face and a stinging in his side, and tried to swat at the latter only for a hand to catch his wrist. He opened his eyes, pushing Ori away with the other hand.

Dixie sat cross-legged on the floor beside him dressed in a baggy shirt and jeans, clean cloth and healing powder laid out on the floorboards, a stimpak in his hand. He stared a moment, muzzy and unsure, and said: "I thought no stimpaks."

"It's that or I stitch you up, and you might not thank me for it," Dixie said calmly, "hold still."

He did, lying quietly a moment as Dixie administered small shots of it along the length of the gash in his side. Ori sat next to him, panting happily, one paw up on his hip. "Where did you get it?" he asked.

"Borrowed from the ghoul in town while she was sleeping—with your caps. You were out, so I got extra for you." He paused a moment. "Sorry for going through your things, figured you wouldn't mind given the circumstances."

"I don't. You could have just asked her, you know. I don't think she'd mind giving them to you either."

"How did you get hurt?" Dixie asked suddenly, not acknowledging, and Marius winced.

"Got shot at." He was aware suddenly that he had no shirt on, and while the blankets still lay tucked over his legs, when he shifted them he felt bare skin on skin. Casting around, he could see his clothes hanging up on a makeshift clothesline near the fireplace. He tried not to think about it too much. "Someone clocked me for a former Legionary in Westside. I think she must have been a slave before."

"And she knew you?" Damianus asked quietly, something dire in the question that had Marius shaking his head.

"She must have just recognized me from passing through. I didn't know her."

He nodded, accepting the answer. Marius looked up at him properly. He looked different than the last time, his hair still shaggy but a little better kept, finger-combed maybe, but his face was clean shaven. He looked years younger without the beard. Marius had always figured they were around the same age, but he could actually see it clearly now.

Dixie caught him looking and rubbed a hand over his chin. "Might grow it back now," he muttered, "if you're getting spotted out there. Should maybe grow one too."

"You look good without it," Marius mumbled, and screamed a little inside his head. He hadn't meant for it to come out like—

Like—

Had Dixie crawled into bed with him last night?

He pondered the hazy memory, as Dixie moved on to stick another stimpak in his arm. Tried again not to think too much about the— the certainty that he remembered warm, bare skin against his chest, arms around him. Maybe he'd been imagining it, in his stupor. Fantasizing about someone to warm him as he shivered, and with only Dixie nearby, that someone in his mind's eye had… had shaggy black hair and piercing grey eyes.

That must have been it.

"Shouldn't have wandered into a snowstorm like that," he was saying, "could have died out there if Ori hadn't come and gotten me."

"Good girl," Marius muttered, and she made a playful little grumble at the acknowledgement and sniffed at him. "Needed to get somewhere safe, and I couldn't go back through Westside."

"So you came here."

"Worked out, didn't it? More or less."

Dixie was quiet a moment, soothing healing powder over the small cuts that remained after the stimpak did its work on the worst of his wounds. Marius tried not to relax too much into the feeling of hands on him, gently tending to him, even as he felt a little guilty for all the trouble Dixie had gone through on his account. Bringing him here, putting him in front of the fire to warm him, dressing his injuries… whatever else he may have done.

"Think you're well enough to sit up and eat breakfast if I heat up some leftovers?"

Marius nodded, and struggled upward, Dixie putting one hand to his uninjured shoulder to steady him as he sat on the couch cushions arrayed under him on the floor. He pulled the blankets up with him, wrapping them around him for modesty as much as warmth—he had his shorts on still, he found to his relief, but that only made it a little less mortifying. There was still a low fire crackling in the fireplace, and enough ashes to suggest Dixie had tended it for some time. He sat there enjoying the warm as Dixie pushed to his feet and made his way towards the doorway to the kitchen.

"Dixie," he said, and he stopped with a hand on the doorframe, leaning back to give him a questioning look. "Thank you."

Dixie watched him a moment, that grim look stuck on his face, then nodded, glancing down. "Just don't do it again," he said, and continued on his way.

Marius smiled to himself a little, as Ori snuggled up against him.


	6. Visit Eight

"I don't think they're going to care," Marius said, leaning against the bathroom doorway and digging through the front pocket of his pack. Ori yawned, watching from the hall behind him. "None of them even have hair, except Calamity, and that's—well, you know." He held out the comb to him anyway.

"Who's Calamity?" Dixie asked, taking it. He'd freshly shaved his face, but his hair was still a rat's nest.

"The ghoul," Marius told him. "Marcus is the supermutant who runs the place, and Keene is the leader of the nightkin."

"Right, right." As he watched, Dixie took the comb to his hair, starting at the roots, and immediately hit a tangle, wincing as he pulled at it. He tried again to the same result, tugging harder this time, visibly frustrated and hurting himself.

"Start at the ends, and—here, hand it over before you break my comb." He directed him to sit on the closed toilet and Dixie complied, fidgeting with his sleeves. He'd changed into something different for the occasion, his clothes just as baggy and ill fit but almost… artfully so. The deep collar of his grey-green shirt framed his chest and a long diagonal scar that ran across it, tassels of torn material hanging off it here and there and folds in how he'd wrapped and tied it around himself at the middle, at once loose and fitted. "Are you trying to be friends with the mutants or seduce them?" Marius asked as he took a section of his hair in his right hand and started combing out the tangles at the ends with short strokes of his left.

"What? No, I just—want to look nice," he said, rubbing his hands over the textured surface of his patchwork jeans. "I haven't seen anyone in a while."

"Excuse me. Who am I then?"

"You're Marius, who's already seen me at my worst. Give me a reason to dress up for you and I'll consider it," Dixie said. "Unless you're asking me to seduce  _ you _ ."

"Only if you want to," Marius teased, feeling heat creep up from his collar. "But then again, I really have seen you at your worst."

"It's not a pretty sight," Dixie agreed, and he could have sworn he saw his ears burning red under all that hair as he moved on to another section.

"Could be worse," Marius allowed. Not wholly agreeing, but… he didn't want to go there. Not today. This was as far as that conversation went, and no further. "When's the last time you brushed this?"

"Never, I think. I just use my fingers."

"That's upsetting. You're upsetting me. I'm going to get you your own comb, because that's not allowed." He worked through the rest of his hair, untangling it from the ends to the roots one section at a time before giving it a final once over from roots to ends, admiring its shine. When it was done he stood back as Dixie looked in the mirror, absently running his fingers through it. "Are you ready?"

"I don't know. Does it look good? Or do you think I should tie it back like you do?"

"I don't think it's long enough to get all of it tied. You look fine," Marius assured him. "Best I've seen you in, what, almost a month now?" He fussed a moment longer as Marius watched, smiling at the way he nervously preened himself in the mirror. Like he was about to go on his first date, but with an entire town of mutants. "They're going to like you," he said gently. "I promise. You're likeable."

"That sounds fake but I'll go with it," Dixie said, dragging in a shaky breath. He looked at Marius in the mirror. "I don't know if I'm ready. Do you think I'm ready?"

"I think you were ready fifteen minutes ago."

"Look at you, you spend at least thirty in the bathroom every morning doing your hair. Don't think I don't notice."

"Fair." He grinned. "You look fine. Really. Are you ready to go?"

"I… think so. Yeah. I'm ready." Marius nodded, reached to clap him on the shoulder but thought the better of it and pocketed his hands instead.

"I'll get your coat."

The walk down to Jacobstown was one full of anxious energy from Dixie, who stopped every few meters to debate whether he ought to just turn back around and go home. It was going to go fine, Marius assured him again and again. They already kind of liked him, without ever having seen him—they asked Marius about him all the time when he stopped by, asked when Dixie would come and introduce himself.

No one paid much mind as they walked around the back of the lodge, the grounds full of mutants milling about on daily chores. They stood there a moment, looking around, Dixie staring wide-eyed at the passing nightkin. Marius suspected it might be his first time coming here when they were all awake and about.

"Lily's over there," Marius told him, pointing. "You should go say hi, she wanted to speak with you." Dixie followed his pointing finger to the hulking nightkin in the bighorner pen, hauling out a bale of hay that must have weighed as much as Dixie using only one massive arm. He looked back at Marius. "Do you want me to go with you?" he asked, gently.

"Please?" Dixie said, his voice smaller than usual.

Marius led the way, lifting an arm when she turned her head towards them. "Miss Lily, it's good to see you," he said, loudly and slowly. "Do you remember we talked about meeting my friend?"

"Oh, hello dearie!" Lily thudded over to the fence to get a closer look at them. "My, aren't you handsome! You didn't tell me your little boyfriend was such a looker, sweetie," Lily added to Marius, in a stage whisper that carried and grated deep in her throat.

"He's not my—" He fidgeted with his scarf, and gestured. "This is my  _ friend _ , Dixie Greene. Dixie, this is Lily."

Lily removed one of her gardening gloves and dusted her fingers off on the front of her coveralls before taking Dixie's more delicate hand in her meaty grip. His entirely vanished in her fist, but she shook it gingerly. "It's so lovely to meet you dear. Marius has said so many nice things about you. Did he tell you about my kids?"

"Your… kids?"

"My bighorner kids, dear." She gestured behind her to a couple of small bighorner ambling together at the other end of the pen. As always, it was strange, talking to Lily. The sweetness about her, unlike any other nightkin Marius had met, even as she struggled not to growl and half-shout every endearment. "Nightstalkers got after their poor mother, so I'm having to hand rear them, and we have more on the way. I swear I'm gonna make steaks out of that buck one of these days," she added with a snarl, a shade of something aggressive coming out in her voice, there and gone as she looked back at the two of them, not seeming to notice the way Dixie widened his stance and went on alert. Ori didn't mind, sniffing around the fence and watching the bighorners intently—some leftover instincts from a cattle dog buried in her mutt lineage, maybe.

"I have my hands full with the pregnant nannies," Lily told them more gently, nodding to the fatter bighorner grazing on the hay she'd brought out. "Could use some help with the little ones."

"I think Dixie would be a great helper," Marius volunteered. "He's good with animals."

"That's wonderful, dear! Would you like to help me feed them?" She said, turning her attention on him as Dixie fidgeted with something in his pocket. "I've got some formula up from the Followers, but they're just so delicate, it's hard for big ol' Grandma to hand feed them."

"I…" Dixie said, casting a wide-eyed look at Marius, who made an encouraging gesture at him. "... Yes, I think I can help. If you want my help."

"Oh I'd just love it, sweetie! Come on over the fence here, let's get you set up with a bottle."

In short order she had Dixie sitting on the ground with a bighorner kid in his lap, suckling from a bottle of formula in his hand as he stroked it with his other, watching it with a look of awe. Marius leaned on the fence, talking with Marcus as he passed by and keeping Dixie in the corner of his eye, smiling at him whenever he looked his way. There were unshed tears in his eyes when Marius caught them, and he looked aside, embarrassed, but grinned to himself.

Lily leaned over him, patting Dixie on the back and telling him what a wonderful job he was doing, and Marius saw the tears escape down his cheeks as he nodded mutely.

They stayed a while, puttering around the pen helping Lily feed her herd, then stopped by the medical office in the lodge where Calamity greeted him warmly. Dixie's eyes were still red as she told him how lovely it was to finally meet him. "Are you doing alright up there?" she asked. "Have everything you need? We've been getting more supplies up from the Followers, so you just ask if you need any stimpaks."

"Thank you, I—I'm good for now."

She nodded and patted his hand. "It really is a delight to meet you, we've all wondered who you were. Hoped to get to see your face sooner, but you're here now. You don't hesitate to come to me if you need any help, okay?"

"Okay. Yes, miss Calamity."

"And so formal! I knew I'd like you," she said with a gentle smile creeping across the ruin of her face.

They met with Marcus, and briefly with Keene, though that was as brusque a run-in as Marius expected it to be. By the time the afternoon was turning late, Dixie had been introduced to half the town, at least to the half of it that was sociable. The rest politely ignored him as they passed, minding their own business.

Dixie seemed elated as they walked back up to the cabin, the evening coming on quickly. "Lily says they need to be fed four times a day for the first month," he was saying. "I've agreed to come down and do it for her, help around the pens and the garden while I'm around. Marcus says he'll pay me thirty caps a week for the assistance."

He was like a different person, Marius thought. A boyish energy about him as he talked, fussing with the hem of his shirt and grinning shyly. It took so little to bring something else out in him—friendship, a kind word. "Successful day, I think," Marius said aloud, taking in the huge grin on his face. "I told you they'd like you. I'm glad you went."

"Me too. Thank you, Marius. It's—it's been a while, since I—"

"I know," he said.

He nodded, and punched Marius lightly on the arm when the moment became too much. "You staying the night again?"

"Rather that than go back down the mountain in the dark."

"Race you back—loser cooks dinner."

"If I win we both lose!" Marius called as Dixie took off like a shot, and chased after him anyway, Ori barking at their heels.


	7. Visit Nine

Digging through the medicine cabinet, Dixie said, "You really need to take better care of yourself."

"Don't you start on me now," said Marius, without any heat. "You sound like my mother."

"Consequences of someone caring about you, maybe," Damianus replied calmly, and he scowled at him from where he sat on the bathroom sink, shirt off to show the damage. Ori sprawled out to sleep on the bed in the other room, watching them idly through half-lidded eyes as she made herself comfortable on Dixie's blankets. They were in the bathroom off of Damianus' bedroom, where he had started keeping the majority of his supplies. The house was too big and too empty to care about more than a small space of it, too much quiet for just him to combat. He lived in this room, he only existed in the others briefly, cooking and eating his meals or sitting up to watch a holotape in the living area. Mostly, only passing through on his way down the slope to Jacobstown each day. "Don't give me that," he said, just as patiently, as he pulled a bottle out of the medicine cabinet. "What would you say if it were me, blowing into your place beaten to hell and back? I like to hope you'd say something—"

"Don't—"

"—just like being Legion again if you didn't," and Marius flinched, still glowering at him. Dixie looked him in the eye. "I told you what it was like for me, I know it was the same for you. No one to care if you didn't come home one day? That's not what this is. It matters to me that you do. Okay?

"I expect that from you, if you're my friend. So you can expect it from me too, because I  _ am _ your friend."

Marius said nothing, looking away moodily.

Damianus picked up a clean rag from the sink, plugged the bottle with it and overturned it. Alcohol for cleaning wounds, from Calamity. With gentle hands, she'd shown him better ways to tend them on the occasions he got cuts or splinters working around the bighorner pen, even given him supplies to take home at a discount, though he still paid what he could from the wages Marcus gave him. He dabbed it at the cut on Marius' lip, who hissed and leaned away.

"It stings but it helps. Like bitter drink," he said. "What happened, anyway?"

"Got in a fight," Marius muttered.

"I figured that much. Raiders?"

"NCRA. At a bar in Freeside." He glared at the opposite wall, going quiet a moment as Damianus gently dabbed the alcohol at his split lip, then moved on to the gash on his chin. "They'd had a few, and thought I talked funny for a tribal."

"Figured out you were Legion," he said.

Marius nodded. "They'd have started in with any former Legionary they caught after they got in their cups."

"True, but I can't imagine you didn't help the situation."

"Now you  _ really _ sound like my mother."

"I just know you. Or enough of you to figure out the rest. You going to tell me I'm wrong?" Damianus asked. He thumbed a smear of healing poultice onto Marius' lip, trying not to notice the way he glanced at him as he did.

"I'm just lucky they didn't recognize me," he mumbled, looking down. His shoulders relaxed fractionally as Damianus rubbed more poultice into the cut on his chin. He moved on to a gash on his ribs.

"They pulled a knife?" he asked.

Marius nodded. "Yes, at right about the time I figured I was better running for it."

"Good idea. I assume you won't be telling your mother they tried to kill you, though."

"And say what? 'Ma, some meanie troopers tried to knife me, can you please go talk to their command daddy for me?'" He scoffed.

"If they're getting that violent with ex-Legionaries in her territory she might like to know,” Dixie said reasonably.

"'Her' territory. I forget I can't set foot in the Mojave somewhere but she owns the place."

"She doesn't own this one," Damianus said. "Why would they have recognized you?"

"Who?"

"The troopers. You said—"

Marius shook his head with a look like he didn't plan to answer. He propped his arm up on Dixie's head to give him room to work on the gash on his side. The bathroom was silent a while as he did, gently scrubbing alcohol into it, followed by the poultice. At last, Marius said: "I went undercover in the NCRA a while. At Nelson." He looked at him from the corner of his eye but Damianus didn't react to the mention. He knew what had happened at Nelson. He just had no place judging Marius' involvement. "Still have troopers think they recognize me from training now and again. I'd be in the shit if they knew who I was, what I did."

Damianus nodded, not dislodging the arm slung over him. Marius removed it as he finished. "Cut's shallow enough, shouldn't need sutures. The poultice ought to take care of it."

Marius sat looking at his hands as he cleaned up around him. Eventually he pulled on his shirt and hopped off the counter. "Drinks?"

This had become a routine too, sitting and drinking and talking. Damianus was getting a taste for it, though he tried not to drink so much when he was alone. It was only ever sorrow that it brought up in him, sitting up the nights in the kitchen and feeling sorry for himself. With Marius it was a prerequisite to talking about whatever came to mind—sometimes serious things, as he vented about his family, the things going on in the Mojave for him. Sometimes less serious, trading what stories from their pasts they could still laugh about.

"So they asked me to write a jody for the squad," he said. "Next thing I know there's ten of us, sitting around on the floor, coming up with lines. Most of them were garbage," he laughed. "But we got a decent jody out of it. Better than the stuff the sergeants had us singing in formation, that… 'I used to love a beauty queen, now I love my M16' crap."

"What, you're telling me a guy like you didn't have a beauty queen waiting on him?" Damianus asked, smiling over the mouth of his beer.

"I wish. You forget I was in the Legion?"

"Fair. Seems like you liked the NCRA better."

"I tried not to, but." He drew in a long, bracing breath through his nose. "Like you said, in the Legion it was… no one cared if you lived or died."

"That wasn't always true," Damianus admitted.

"How do you mean?"

"If you were close with your brothers. I was. We looked out for each other," he said. "But I guess it was still… within reason, you know, like… If someone didn't come back you grieved alone. He simply wasn't there in formation one day, and nobody talked about it." He'd grieved alone for all of them. Erasmus and the rest—no one carved their names into a stone, no one else shed a tear that they were gone. "I ran out of people who cared at Boulder, though. Burned Man burned right through them in that battle."

Marius nodded. "There's loyalty there, I guess. To your brothers. I never really had that, except—I mean, to my actual brother, but I barely knew him. Meant to get him out of the east alive however I could, even if he was a stranger. But it felt like I was doing it alone. Couldn't rely on anyone else, talk to anyone else. Just me, with or against everyone in turns."

"That's a hard way to be, alone."

"Yeah." Marius was quiet a long time as they both stared moodily into the fire, drinking their beers wordlessly. At last he said, apropos of nothing at all, "What am I doing?"

Dixie looked at him.

"Not here, I mean, just," he gestured with a flail of his hand, "In general. What am I doing?"

"You tell me,” he said, leaning back in his chair. There were two of them, soft old armchairs facing the fire in his bedroom, green upholstery gone greyish with time and dust, but still comfortable. Dixie’s all but devoured him when he slouched down into it.

Marius looked down at his hands, toying with the frayed and disintegrating old label on his bottle. "I've done about one good thing in my life, back east, getting everyone out. I got them out alive, together, with Venator and his Legion arrayed against us. I won that. But—"

"You're a stranger to them,” Damianus said. “Your family. Not around enough for them to know the you that I’ve met.”

"Better that way. What's there worth knowing in me?” Damianus opened his mouth, but before he could object Marius went on: “I don't even know. Who even am I, after the Legion?"

"That's one of the heavy questions,” he admitted, hooking one foot over the other where they stretched out towards the warmth of the fire. His eyes wandered to a portrait on the wall. Someone who couldn’t answer that question either, even as he’d wanted to.

Marius snorted. "The two in the morning, can't sleep questions."

Damianus nodded, smiling faintly. "The middle of the day, ‘why am I even still alive’ questions."

"The back road going nowhere questions."

"The waking up next to a stranger who doesn't know your real name questions."

"I think I'm just… empty,” Marius said softly.

"I'll drink to that."

"I want to feel like I've done something, something all on my own. Like I've succeeded, somehow, but I don't know what I want to actually do.” He blew out a breath, looking up at the shadow boxes on the wall full of someone else’s memorabilia and military exploits. Someone long dead, their ghost long gone from this house. “Instead I'm just out wandering, fighting, lying to people."

"About the only things they ever taught us.” Damianus took a long drink, stomach sinking with the thought and the mood. “What are we, outside of what they made us? Can we even live normal lives?"

"I don't think we can. It's almost like… like I crave conflict." Marius picked at a loose thread on the arm of his chair, long fingers twisting it in knots as he stared without seeing.

"I think that's normal. The Legion only knew conflict, it was all we were built for. Settling down is…"

"You've settled down,” he said, looking up at him. “You're here, in this house, living the quiet life. Helping Lily with the animals."

"It's something, but it's… I came here in self exile.” Dixie squirmed upright, uncomfortable in his slouch, and leaned forward to stoke the fire with the poker leaning nearby. “The Legion touched every part of my life, and I didn't know how to get away from it. Couldn't tell the people I loved what I'd done, couldn't stay with them without telling them. They deserved that from me and I couldn't give it. Couldn't give the world much of anything but a sword arm, hunting bounties for the Courier because killing is all I know."

"And now?" Marius asked softly.

"Now… it's empty, when you're not here. This house.” Damianus had to look away, not seeing the look that crossed Marius’ face as he set aside the poker, the fire roaring. “Not so bad now I have somewhere else to go to, but even that feels… undeserved. They don't know who or what I really am."

"They served in the Master's army, most of them. I think they get it."

"Not like you do.” He leaned back and looked out the window, at the cloudy night sky. Dark and dull outside, with another snow coming in, snowflakes winking in the light through the window. “And even with that it still feels like, I don't know. I don't deserve to be known and remembered. Don't deserve to live quietly like this. To be happy."

Marius took a long drink at that. "Yeah,” was all he said for a while. Then: “Still want it though, I just. Don't know what I  _ want _ .” He drummed his fingers on the arm of the couch. “To feel something different, I guess. Feel like I have something that's only mine, that can't be taken away from me. Wasn't given to me on someone else's mercy."

Dixie looked at him out of the corner of his eye. "You have your family."

"They have themselves,” he said sharply, “and I'm just… around. When I'm around. Can't stand to  _ be _ around half of the time,” Marius sighed, hands going to his hair, “they want so much from me, want to tell me how to live my life like everyone else told me. It's not their place, whatever good intentions they think they have. It's nobody's place anymore."

"It's just hard when you don't really know… who to be or what to do on your own."

"Yeah."

"They took everything from us,” Dixie said into the silence that followed that. “You know, I can't even remember what my parents called me as a boy. Do you?" Marius nodded, but didn't volunteer anything. Damianus nodded back, slowly, trying not to be hurt by it. "Damianus is all I have for a 'real' name. Dixie's a lie I tell people. I don't even know who I am but for what the Legion told me. What's left when that's gone? What's left of me that's a real, whole person? Am I enough?"

Marius opened his mouth, then closed it, seeming to think the better of it. Then he thought again, looked away as he said: "You are to me."

"Who am I to you?" Damianus asked.

"You're Dixie Greene. Softest ex-Legionary I ever met."

He snorted. "You can't even describe me without it."

"True,” Marius said slowly, “but it's been such a part of who we are. Can't escape that, but you're not defined by it. It's the softness, I think, that makes you. Not the Legion. Legion just serves as a—a sort of counterpoint to underscore what a gentle person you really are at heart. Because you kept that when they tried to beat it out of you.

"Who am I to  _ you _ ?" he asked, looking down at his hands around the bottle, and took a long drink.

Dixie thought about it a moment. "You're Marius, the only man I trust to understand what it's been like."

He rolled his eyes and glanced away. "Any ex-Legionary could understand. That’s nothing special."

"Yes, but that doesn't mean I trust them.” Dixie leaned forward, trying to catch his eye. “To know the right from the wrong, in all we did. To stand against it. You said yourself, so many of them miss it, even if only for the structure. I know I do. Hardly know what to do with myself without anyone telling me. But you're… you,” he murmured. “You stand against. You're strong in where you stand, even if it's against everyone else. You know who you are."

"I'm not so sure," Marius said quietly.

Dixie nodded. "I think I am. Maybe it's your bullheadedness, but you… you're a good man, somewhere in there. The kind who cares. Who takes care of other people, even if they don’t deserve it. Who wants to do something worthwhile with his time here, even if you don't know what."

"Hard to find anything  _ to _ do that's worthwhile,” Marius grumbled, “when my mother and her robots have a monopoly on it here."

"Maybe you get the bullheadedness from her,” said Dixie.

"I ought to knock you stupid for that one."

"It was just a thought. I don't really know her, only  _ of _ her. Her greatness—"

"Please, not you too,” Marius groaned.

"—think you could have that too. Not because of her, and what you inherited from her, but because of who you are."

"And who is that again?"

"The man who risked everything to get everyone out alive, you said yourself." He shrugged. "The man who took the time to befriend a nobody living in exile in the woods, just because he cared. And here we are, on visit nine. Asking the deep questions.” 

They looked at each other a long moment, and Marius was the first to glance away, something strange dawning on his face. Dixie had to look off as well, his own face warming. He meant everything he said, the good and the bad. He liked having him around, liked being cared for in whatever way Marius cared to show it. Liked not being alone, but in particular, liked being not-alone with him. Someone who knew who he was and liked him anyway. Someone who cared about him whether he thought he deserved it or not. Someone he could care about, with his whole heart.

And he wanted him to know he cared about him in turn. That he thought the world of him. Liked having him around. Cared that he came back—waited, for him to come back.

“The ‘will he or won’t he’ questions,” Marius said quietly.

“Will he or won’t he… what?”

Marius shook his head, and pushed to his feet, drink empty. “It’s getting late, I should probably head out in the morning.”

“But you just got here,” Dixie said, trying to keep the dismay out of his voice even as he said it. Marius hesitated, looking down at him. “I just… like it better, when you’re here.”

He could see him swallow, glancing away again, and Dixie did too. Was that too forward? He wasn’t going to ask him for—

“I should… I should get going in the morning, but I’ll be back soon. Things to do.”   
  
“You’ll try not to be busted up this time when you come back?” he asked.

“Can’t promise anything.”

“Well. I can promise that if you are, I’ll put alcohol on it, and only lecture you like your mother a little bit.”

“Thanks,  _ ma _ ,” he said, rolling his eyes as he made his way to the double doors leading out of Dixie’s room.

“Marius,” Dixie said as he went, and he hesitated, hand on the door handle. Something in Dixie wanted to ask him to stay, not just in the home, but here, in—Maybe it was the beer on an empty stomach. And maybe that was a bad idea. Moreso than anything, he didn’t want to see him go. His heart sank at the prospect of being alone again. “Do you promise you’ll come back and see me again soon?”

“Visit ten?” Marius asked, smiling faintly. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”


	8. Visit Ten

A few days passed, and he didn't come back. That was normal enough. Ori was getting heavier with those puppies, and he tried not to run her so hard or put her in danger and stress. When it became four days, Dixie wondered if maybe she'd finally popped and Marius was dealing with an armful of dogs.

At six days, he started to wonder if he just wasn't coming back this time. Maybe he'd done something wrong and driven him off.

At seven, he thought maybe he'd died out there this time. He wasn't sure what to do with the yawning emptiness of that thought though, so he tucked it away.

He wasn't used to being alone this long anymore. Well, not alone. He had Jacobstown. Nearly the whole of the town knew him now, and seemed to like him. He had Marcus and Calamity and especially Lily, and at home he had a pen with two adult bighorners she'd given him to get them off her hands, and a chicken from a recent trade she had made with a farmer who'd come up from North Vegas. Dixie didn't know the man yet but they'd traded a nod as he spoke with Lily, recognizing each other by posture and the hard look on each other's faces even if they'd never met personally. In exchange for a tame buck he'd brought up three chickens from a growing coop he was keeping down the way.

Dixie built the fences mostly himself, with a little help from a mutant named Kenneth who hauled the lumber up for him and helped put the posts down in exchange for a portion of his wages. They were rough but they did the job of keeping his new animals safe. He'd built enough fortifications as a boy to be fairly comfortable constructing a small shed to keep them out of the snow when it came down, and it was coming along well, he thought.

So he wasn't alone. He had the two bighorners, whom Lily had named Sweetie and Poppy, and the hen he named Lily for no other reason than that he could think of nothing else. He had the town, his friends. He maybe had that farmer, if he came back and Dixie talked to him this time, found out if he wasn’t the worst the Legion could have turned out. Didn’t seem to be, as respectfully as he’d come to the mutants looking for trade with fellow outsiders.

But going on a week without Marius felt lonelier than he'd been in some time. He missed him more than he missed some people he'd known longer.

And he wondered if he was to blame, until the night he heard the clack of dog claws again.

He lay in bed listening, relieved to hear the indistinct murmur of Marius' distinct voice downstairs, talking to Ori. Ori, who moved slower now from room to room and couldn't be bothered sometimes to come up the stairs unless someone carried her. Boots thumped up the stairs and stopped outside his door, and he wondered if he would knock, announce his presence, invite himself into the room as he’d invited himself into the house—he’d have welcomed him. But instead he heard him turn back and descend again, and the distant click of the guest room door closing.

But he was back.

At least he was back.

Dixie slept a little easier that night, knowing he was back.

* * *

Marius awoke hanging half off the edge of the large bed, the rest taken up by a sprawling Ori, who had cuddled up closer and closer in his space as he retreated through the night. She’d gotten huge and spoiled by his babying her.

He let her have the bed as he dressed and combed his hair in the mirror on the bedroom wall, before going up to check on Dixie. Finding the bedroom door open, he let himself inside and cast around for any sign of him. The hearth was cold, but the string lights were on, giving the room a warm, dim glow in the cloudy grey morning.

“Dixie?” he called.

“In here,” from the bathroom.

Marius approached cautiously, stepping loudly to give him a chance to add on if he was indecent. When he didn’t, he peered around the door and found him sitting cross-legged on the marble bathroom counter, peering at himself in the mirror with a pair of scissors in his hand. An old magazine lay on the counter next to him, opened on a once-glossy advertisement of a handsome man with well groomed hair and a tailored suit, smiling back at the camera with a cigarette in hand. Dixie looked at Marius’ reflection. “Got in late last night.”

“Sorry. Long day, and Ori was slow coming up the mountain. Didn’t want to wake you when I got here.”

“That’s okay. Any new bullet holes?”

“Not today.” He leaned on the doorframe, crossing his arms and nodding to the scissors. “What are you up to?”

Dixie ran the other hand through his hair. “Thinking about cutting it all off. Thought I might shave it like I used to, but I figure I’d like to have _some_ left this time, make me look less like a Legion grunt.”

He nodded. “Have you ever cut it yourself before?”

“Only with a razor. Trying to figure out what I plan to do with it,” he said, with a gesture to the magazine page. “Not sure how to make it look like that. Or if I _want_ to, seems a little too neat. I don’t want to look like a Strip casino manager, either.”

“Do you need any help?”

Dixie looked at him instead of the mirror. “Could you?” he asked, holding the scissors out.

“Yeah,” he said, “no problem,” even as he bit down on an internal scream. He’d never actually cut anyone else’s hair before.

They took a hand-mirror from the sink drawer and a towel from the shower, then moved the operation downstairs to the dining room, where Dixie could sit at a low-backed wooden chair and give Marius a view and access to his whole head. Dixie stripped his shirt off and set it aside to keep the hair off it, showing well cut muscle and no few scars as he draped the towel around his neck.

“How long have you been growing it? Shame to cut it all off,” Marius said conversationally as he ran a comb through it, looking it over, trying to figure out where to begin.

“Almost two years?” Dixie said. It was just past his chin, straight and coal black. “Never really liked having it long, I just didn’t want to be recognized.”

“What changed your mind now?” Marius asked.

“I don’t know. I just don’t think it suits me,” he said, closing his eyes as Marius grabbed a handful of strands framing his face and began measuring them out with his fingers. He'd just leave a couple of inches, should be enough.

“I beg to differ.”

“I doubt you’ve ever begged for anything in your life,” Dixie said with a snort. “I don’t know. It just doesn’t look like me in the mirror, and I’d like it to.”

Marius knew enough to cut with the direction of the hair rather than across, but that was about it. Still, it wasn't as though Dixie would do much better on his own. He began chopping roughly at the strands he'd gotten hold of, and long black hair drifted down, draping over the towel on Dixie's shoulders. He ran his fingers through what was left, feeling the softness of it. So far so good. He glanced at Dixie, who sat with his eyes closed. He had long, dark eyelashes that were more apparent this close.

Marius took another handful of hair and cut it, the same as before, choppy strokes of the scissors giving it an uneven texture as he trimmed it down to a few inches. He hoped it would turn out alright, in the end, aware that he really had no clue what he was doing. Just… Dixie needed his help and—

And he rested a finger under his chin, tilting his head back, and Dixie let him do it, eyes still closed and trusting—

Marius took a breath, dragging his eyes up from his lips to the half-trimmed mess he'd made of his hair. That, at least, distracted him. A whole half of his hair now stuck out in uneven clumps he needed to even up, the other half still hanging long and rakish. He chuckled, and Dixie peeked an eye open.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing. You should see how you look."

"You're messing it up, aren't you," he said flatly, but closed his eyes again as Marius took hold of the front of his hair on the other side. "If you muck it up I'll shave it all off. Don't care if it makes me look like a soldier again."

"I won't muck it up," he said. "But that was a good look for you—I saw you at the Fort once or twice, I think?"

"Yes. We never spoke," Dixie said.

"Shame," he sighed. "Then again, who knows if we'd have gotten on, meeting as Legionaries."

"Maybe," Dixie said thoughtfully. "I probably would have still liked you."

"I might've not liked you," Marius admitted, and Dixie peeked up at him. "I never cared much for our 'brothers.' Didn't trust a single man I met in the Legion."

"You trust me now?"

"Yes," Marius said, cutting at more of his hair. He ran his fingers through it again, swiping away trimmings and feeling again how soft it was, especially now with the split ends off. Gently, he tilted his head forward and started on the back. "Do you trust me?"

"I must, to let you wield those at me. Savor that," Dixie told him.

"Oh believe me, I am," he teased, brushing away more loose strands with his fingers. Cautiously, he put his hand under his chin again to tilt his head back, just to do it and again, Dixie let him, eyes closed and face relaxed and stoic and… achingly handsome, scars and all. Under the guise of checking his work he found himself staring at his lips again, full and soft-looking, and… and _kissable_.

What if he just did it? Dixie liked men, he knew that much. He seemed to like Marius in particular. Maybe he'd let him. Maybe he'd like it. A soft flush about his cheeks and ears at the attention, at Marius' hand on his skin, said maybe he would. What if he just leaned forward, and—

As he thought about it, he watched Dixie make a face, lip curling briefly before he sneezed. "Urgh," he said, rubbing at his nose. "Hair tickled me. What?" he asked, when Marius started laughing. "What's funny now?"

Marius set the scissors aside. "Think that's about done," he said, still chuckling, his heart too full for his chest. "Here," he said, handing Dixie the mirror. "What do you think?"

He'd cut it down to just a couple of inches on the top, shorter on the sides, all of it choppy and messy but in a boyish sort of way that stuck out here and there. Dixie inspected his reflection, turning his head this way and that, and nodded to himself. "Think I like it," he said. "What do you think?" He looked up at Marius.

There was still a bit of hair hanging from his cheek and, unthinking, Marius reached to brush it away with the backs of his fingers, looking him over. "Handsome," he murmured. "I think you look very handsome." As their eyes met, he thought it again. What if he just leaned forward and did it? He saw Dixie's eyes flick down to his lips, saw him unconsciously lick his own and realized… he was thinking it too, wasn't he?

So why not?

Marius leaned in and Dixie watched him. For a long moment, a long slow moment as he got closer, Dixie allowed it, even inched forward fractionally to meet him before—

Hands landed against Marius' chest, holding him in place, and Dixie's eyes were wide. "I—I'm sorry, I should… I should go clean up. I have hair all over me."

Marius stepped back, keeping his face neutral as Dixie leapt out of the chair and raced from the room, footsteps thumping back upstairs towards his bedroom. The door slammed shut behind him. He stood there, alone in the empty dining room but for Ori, who'd come out in search of food. She sat heavily and gave him an expectant look, and he stared back as the sound of water running through the pipes started up. "Well, girl," he said, "I fucked that one right up, didn't I?"

He put out food for her in the dish Dixie had set aside for her use, and while she ate he grabbed the broom and dustpan hanging near the pantry and began cleaning up the hair on the floor, his movements perhaps more forceful than necessary. He'd been too forward, too sudden. Taken his chance too soon, and now he might not get another. 

They'd only known each other a month. He'd thought that was plenty of time, but maybe it wasn't enough. Or perhaps there would never have been a good time—what if he'd misread?

He waited until Ori had finished her breakfast, and the sound of running water had well stopped, before he moved to the door. Waffling, Marius considered leaving without a word, but somehow that seemed like it would make a bad situation worse. Even as much as he wanted nothing more than to tuck his tail between his legs and run from the humiliation.

He stood there a minute, thinking over his options, before he raised his voice and called: "I'm heading out."

Silence.

"I'll—I'll come back another time," he said. "I'll be back."

_You sound pathetic._

"Wait!" He had his hand on the door when he heard the upstairs bedroom open, and Dixie's feet pounded across the loft. "Marius, hold on."

He waited, not turning to watch him come down the stairs. Dixie was rushing as fast as his brace would allow him to go, by the sound of it, though his bad leg always held him up a bit on the stairs. Even still he shouldn't have been out of breath when he reached the bottom—Marius had seen him run before, and he had more than enough stamina to make up for his disability—but he drew several deep breaths as he stopped beside him. Finally, Marius turned to look and found him wide-eyed, as if he'd just found himself faced with a deathclaw in his foyer.

They stood staring at each other for a moment. Just as Marius thought to say something, to break the awful silence, Dixie went up on his toes and kissed him.

It was sudden and forceful enough their teeth clacked together, and Dixie leaned back by a few inches to apologize, only to do it again, more sure this time. After the shock wore off, Marius leaned into it, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and feeling Dixie's hands on his hips, pulling him closer.

When they parted his face was burning red, but there was a light in his eyes as he went in for one final peck, one which Marius returned readily. "If you really have to go," he said, "come back soon, okay?"

Marius leaned to give him just one more for good measure, one last taste of his soft lips for the road, and he grinned. "I will."


	9. Visit Eleven

This was stupid.

Night was coming on, and the lights were out downstairs, only the glow of the string lights in the upstairs window indicating Dixie was maybe home. Maybe not. He left them on most of the time. But he wasn't out in the animal pens, and he wasn't downstairs, which gave Marius plenty of space to stare at the bundle of flowers in his hand and regret picking them. There was no guide to how to do this, especially not when they came from where they came from. The flowers were a kind of shorthand, a classic that couldn't be misunderstood in its intent, but who knew how they'd be received.

He took a breath, resisting the urge to toss them in with the hay the two bighorners were grazing on, and let himself into the house.

The jukebox downstairs was playing, which was a good sign that Dixie was here somewhere. Marius took his time wiping off his boots and set the flowers down on the couch next to his pack while he took his coat off. He was hanging it on the hook under the staircase when he heard the door upstairs click open and he set his teeth.

Dixie took his time crossing the loft and picking his way down the stairs, long enough for Marius to pick the flowers up again and, again, contemplate getting rid of them before he saw. But he turned and there he was, standing on the landing, watching him.

"Took you long enough," Dixie said. "It's been almost a week."

"I know. I know, I said I'd come back soon, but—"

"Where's Ori?"

"At my mother's place, four puppies lighter."

Dixie nodded, and seemed mollified by the answer, a slight tension releasing out of his shoulders and making Marius' heart sink a fraction. Had he really thought he regretted it?

He gave the flowers a questioning look, and Marius hefted them a little in his hand. "I, uh… brought these for you. If you want them." Slowly, he came the rest of the way down the stairs to take them, his face still unreadable. Marius waited, for what he wasn't sure, until Dixie looked back up at him.

"Thank you," he said. "Have you eaten?"

"Not in a bit."

"I tried cooking something last night. Didn't turn out bad. There's some leftovers in the fridge, if you want to heat it up."

Marius nodded stiffly and turned to the kitchen, glancing back once to find Dixie still inspecting the flowers in his hand.

They were nowhere in sight when he joined him in the kitchen a few minutes later, and Marius wondered if he'd thrown them away. They ate in silence, a kind of stir fry which was a little bland but not too bad for only a month of learning to cook. As Dixie was cleaning up their bowls, Marius stared at his hands, picking at a hangnail and thinking. Until, his back to him at the sink, Dixie said: "Are we going to talk about it?"

Marius blew out a breath. "I was wondering the same thing. Do you… regret it?" he asked carefully.

"No. Not even a little bit." Still not looking at him, he ducked his head and asked, "Do you?"

"Not even a little bit."

"Okay." He turned off the sink, leaving the bowls to soak, and turned to face him. His eyes stayed down as he leaned back against the counter and crossed his arms, looking small and shy. "Where do we go from there, then?"

"I'm not really sure. It's…"  _ Different _ , he wanted to say. Whatever this was, it threatened to be a lot different than any of his dalliances before. Because he wanted… something. More, something big. Something soft. He watched Dixie watching the floor and asked, "Where do you want it to go?"

"I don't know." He shrugged. "I like you a lot. I like spending time with you. And—I liked kissing you." Dixie glanced up and Marius flashed a smile that felt feeble on his face, and got a shaky little smile back before he glanced away. "Everyone else I've been with, I had to leave."

"Because they didn't know where you came from," Marius said. He nodded. "But I do. I get it. And you… know where I've been, too."

"We have that at least."

"At least we have that," he agreed. He ran his hands through his hair. "Dixie, I—I like you a lot, too. I don't know what I want, but I know that."

"We can start there, I think." He fidgeted with his sleeves. "Don't know what you get up to when you're out there. If it's me then it's just me. And for me there'll just be you. Deal?" Dixie asked, looking up at him under his brow.

"Deal." He stood still as Marius stood up and came around the bar to him, let him step closer until they were inches apart. "Can I kiss you again?"

Dixie nodded.

They tried it slower this time, getting a feel for it. His hands rested on Dixie's hips, feeling how thin he was under the baggy clothes, felt Dixie's arms come up and loop around his neck, holding him there as they traded soft kisses under the dim kitchen lights. They stayed standing that way when they stopped, foreheads resting together and looking in each other's eyes.

"Whatever this is," Dixie whispered, "I think I'd like a lot of it, for a long time."

"Me too."

He pulled Marius closer, planting another kiss on his jaw in passing before he just… held him, head resting against his neck, arms tight around his shoulders. Slowly, still getting the hang of it, Marius brought his arms up and wrapped them around his waist, hugging him back. He breathed him in—he smelled of herbal soap, clean clothes. Felt warm and soft in his arms, a perfect fit, like he belonged there. Like he'd found something he hadn't known he was missing, a part of himself he thought he didn't need, wrapped up in another person in his arms. Dixie's fingers toyed with his hair, and Marius rested his head against his neck, and just breathed.

They ended up on the couch in front of the fire, tucked in close against each other, murmuring a conversation while enjoying the warmth of another body and the feel of one another's hands toying with their fingers between them. Dixie pressed his hand palm-to-palm against Marius' and admired the difference, the way Marius' long fingers overlapped his smaller ones, the interplay of similar scars from work and fighting on light and dark skin. Marius tucked his free arm around his shoulders and rested his cheek against his head, feeling short, soft hair against his skin again, turned enough to plant a kiss on his temple.

They must have fallen asleep curled like that; Marius awoke to a chill when Dixie had disentangled himself from him, and was soothed by a hand brushing through his hair and laying the familiar spare room blanket over him. He dozed on in the thin, blue dawn light coming in from the tall foyer windows, listening to the faint sounds of Dixie outside tending to his animals.

Eventually Dixie returned, smelling of earth and hay, climbing back into his arms under the warmth of the blanket and laying soft kisses on his throat as they slept the morning away, crammed in close on the narrow couch.

In the late morning, Marius had to leave, to trek back across the Mojave and check up on Ori and her puppies. He caught another kiss at the door, long and sweet, and promised he really would be back soon this time. He looked back as he reached the edge of the clearing, just once, and something caught his eye.

There in the window overlooking the clearing, backlit by the string lights of Dixie's bedroom, hung the flowers. He smiled to himself, stepping lighter on his way back down the mountain.


	10. Visit Twelve

“My mother wanted to do something for the midwinter,” Marius said, twisting a rope of dough around itself at the kitchen counter. “Normally the Walker would do something for it, a big meal, a little ceremony for the autumn birthdays.”

“So why didn’t you?” Dixie said from the stove beside him, tending a few boiling pots.

Marius paused, focusing on the dough, starting the process of doubling it over and stretching. “It’s different, when it’s just the few of us,” he said. Distracted, he unstuck a few strands and dragged them through a little more flour. “She was just trying to… Make me grateful to her, or something. Try and play ‘happy family’ again. I think the point was that it was a group thing, not a family one, and I don’t like the thought of it being just about me.”

“She was trying to… Wait.” He heard Dixie put a spoon down, and from the corner of his eye, turned to face him. _”You_ don’t have an autumn birthday?”

“Middle of November,” Marius said, scooping up the first batch of finished noodles. He didn’t look up at his face as he reached over, dropping them in the boiling water.

Dixie was quiet a moment as Marius started on the next rope of dough. He kept his head down, focusing on his work instead of the look on his face. The first few stretches came out uneven, breaking half of them, and he scowled as he mashed them back together.

“It was November when you started coming up here,” Dixie said, stirring at the noodles. “You never mentioned.”

“I just get older every year, like everyone else,” Marius said. “Nothing special about it.”

“You know when it is. That’s pretty special.”

They worked in silence a while, the jukebox in the living area playing a low jazz tune as they pulled dinner together. Marius found himself turning to toss a few of the dough scraps to Ori, but her usual post next to the breakfast nook was empty. She’d been left at his mother’s, her pups too young to be separated from her. Adal had sighed and rolled her eyes at the necessity, but accepted it, even as she had tried to use it against him as a reason to stick around.

He looked at Dixie sidelong, pushing the vegetables around in the soup broth with a lost expression. Marius kept his voice low when he asked, “You don’t know at all, when yours is?”

“No,” he said, equally subdued. “I know the year. That’s it.” They kept at their work as Marius tried to come up with a sympathetic response, but Dixie got there first. “I’d enjoy it, to know someone wanted to do something nice for you, just because they could. To make you feel special.”

Marius did reach over then, floury hand and all, to grab him sideways at the waist and pull him close for a kiss. “Pick a day,” he said, lightly. “I’d love to.”

He accepted it, leaning into the embrace and resting his head on his shoulder. “So you’d do it for someone else, but won’t let them do it for you?”

Marius frowned at him a little, face hidden. Finally, he just put a kiss on his forehead, and took Dixie’s hands. “Here,” he said, standing behind him and showing him how to hold the dough—and pressing his front to his back, chin on his shoulder. “This took me a while to get right, you might as well learn, too.”

It made for a good evening, if a few rather thick and undercooked noodles. After dinner, they just sat together on the couch, a half-bottle of wine forgotten as they talked about nothing much, just… Holding. Touching. Being comfortable in one another’s space, a little more each visit. They fell asleep there again, and Marius woke in the dawn light as Dixie slipped out, settling as he put a kiss on his forehead and tucked the blanket tighter.

As rituals went, he figured, he would be only too happy to keep this one up.

Marius dozed again, expecting Dixie to come back when he had finished tending his animals. But the windows only grew lighter as he got more restless, hearing little thumps and scrapes from elsewhere in the house. Finally, he gave up, pulling the banket up like a cloak over his shirt and shorts, the cabin always a little chilly before sunrise.

“Dixie?” he called, quietly. No answer from upstairs, but there was a little scraping noise from the kitchen, and the distinct sound of something sizzling. Marius sniffed the air, finding a little bready smell had wafted out. “Are you in here?”

“Don’t come in!” He said back, not quite yelling. There was another, louder scrape of a chair being pushed across the floor, and rustling of paper. Marius stopped well back from the entrance, pulling the blanket up a little higher. “Okay,” Dixie said at last.

He was still pushing a chair back into the breakfast nook as Marius entered, eyes going to a battered foil banner that read ‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY’, strung between two of the lights. He stared at it a moment, until Dixie bustling back to the stove caught his eye, muttering as he flipped over a couple—somewhat blackened—sausages, and more carefully slid a pancake from a pan and onto a plate.

“I didn’t teach you that one,” was all Marius could think to say, stepping closer. A cookbook was open on the kitchen island, beside an open sack of flour. A bit of it had spilled onto a package wrapped in a small blanket.

“It’s not a proper _cake,”_ Dixie said, pouring another lade of batter into the pan. “But it’s breakfast that you didn’t have to cook, for once.” He looked back over his shoulder and smiled as Marius leaned on the back of the bar stools. “Happy birthday.”

Marius found he had to wipe his eyes, as he turned away.

It was a good meal, especially for a solo effort, but Marius would have eaten every bite if it had been burned to a crisp. Dixie beamed at him as he ate, almost more excited than Marius was once they pushed their plates aside, and he put the bundle in front of him. “It’s just a couple little things. I didn’t have time to go to Jacobstown,” Dixie said, almost apologetic, and Marius caught his hand to kiss his knuckles.

It was a heavy, soft bundle, and he untied the blanket corners to reveal a thickly knitted sweater folded up inside. “It’s from the boxes here,” Dixie said, as he lifted it up to examine it, a dark green with cabled patterns down the front. “I only wore it a few times, because it’s too big in the shoulders, but should fit you better. You don’t have enough warm things, up here.”

“Thank you,” he said, pulling it on. It did fit, comfortably loose and in excellent shape for its age. Smoothing it out, he paused, seeing the small, flat box that had been wrapped up under it. Dixie smiled and made a little ‘go on’ gesture, and Marius lifted the lid from it, only to stare again. “I can’t take this.”

“It’s a gift, you have to say ‘thank you’ again,” Dixie said, picking it up. Marius leaned forward across the bar, letting him fasten the necklace around his neck, felt the weight of the yao guai teeth on his chest. He twisted to look down at it, turning over the coins that had been hung from it. “First denarius I made, in the Legion,” Dixie said, pointing to one. A hole had been bored into the soft silver, probably the result of a lot of patient work. The other was a little larger, heavier, enameled with a blue and silver star on one side, the flag of New Mexico on the other. He had wrapped wire around this one, hiding some of the engraving around the edges. “From White Sands, where I trained,” Dixie said, rubbing his thumb over it.

He pointed out a few bullet casings from different battles strung along the cord, as Marius touched them, and paused as he found a small gear, that might have come from a clock. “And this?”

Dixie was quiet a moment. “That was from the house where I was born,” he said, not taking his eyes off it. “We went up to Cloudcroft, a few times. The first trip… I recognized the garden gate, but it was shorter than I remembered. The garden was smaller, too, and full of weeds. I used to play there, with a man in a white coat.”

Marius reached to take his hand, let him go on with a lost look in his eyes. “They’d burned the house down, but there were still… All I knew was that I had lived there. Someone loved me. Took care of me. I went back in the night to go through the debris, see what I could… What I could remember.” He shook his head a little, tears spilling over. “I had been so small. But I remember a woman, with long black hair—my mother. She… I think that was hers, something she was working on. It was small enough to hide, so I took it with me.”

Marius took his face in his hands, pulling him forward to kiss him on the forehead, and kept his lips resting there as he asked, “Do you want to keep it with you?”

It took a moment for him to feel Dixie shake his head. “I want you to keep it for me,” he said, pulling away. “And keep bringing it back to me.”

Marius nodded, leaning in to kiss him on the lips, and he met him halfway, holding him there until they ran out of breath. He leaned back just far enough to look him in the eye, lips just touching his as he whispered, “I promise.”

They carried on only a little longer before Dixie stood, drawing him back towards the couch. Marius let himself be led, toying with the gear, with the enormity of being given it— _entrusted_ with it.

With how much else in his life he had taken for granted.

As they settled back on the couch, Dixie in his lap as he worked his fingers through his hair, made a silent promise to to better, if only for him.


	11. Visit Fifteen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's the one that gave it the explicit rating and I'll be honest, it's just sex.

It was Dixie who made the first move: he slid one hand just under the hem of his shirt, skirting his fingers over the bare skin of a hip as they kissed, crammed together in one of the armchairs before the bedroom hearth. After only a moment he rethought the gesture, and drew his hand away—only for Marius to catch it and bring it back. Permission granted, he explored further; he straddled Marius' lap and felt at toned muscle with flat palms and fingertips, until he pushed his shirt up and Marius surrendered it willingly, let him pull it off over his head before reaching to return the favor. They took their time counting scars with their hands, still attached at the lips, starved for the taste of each other.

Dixie's fingers found a spot on Marius' ribs that made him jerk and snort a laugh into his mouth, and he only grinned against his lips and teased it again. Snatching both hands by the wrists, Marius pinned them to his sides to stop him, then nipped a mark into the sensitive skin at the side of Dixie's neck as punishment while he snickered and groaned. But the upper hand was a short-Iived achievement, when Dixie rolled his hips and forced a sharp breath out him.

Still he kept him pinned there, even as Dixie repeated the motion, rocking slowly and drawing pleased little moans at the friction. Marius kissed a line down his chest and released him, eventually, just to slide his hands into the back of his pants, getting a grip on his backside to pull him more firmly against him. Managing to draw his gaze away from where they met, two pairs of trousers regrettably still between them, he looked up at Dixie.

"Is this okay?" Marius asked, voice husky.  _ Please, please let it be okay.  _ He needed more of this, a lot more, right this minute.

"Don't be stupid," Dixie breathed, grinning. "Is it okay with you?"

"Now who's stupid?" Marius leaned up for another kiss and Dixie met him halfway, opening his mouth to him and letting him in.

They scrambled onto the bed not long after, flailing out of their trousers and underthings while barely taking their hands off each other. With nothing else between them Dixie found his way into Marius' lap again, rolled his hips again, dragging an oath out of his mouth as Dixie hissed. They moved together steadily, somewhere between controlled and frantic, Marius using one hand to hold them tight against each other. Dixie pushed him down onto the pillows and braced himself up with his hands on Marius' shoulders, watching him with half-hooded eyes and mouth hanging open as he ground down on him. 

"God, you're gorgeous," he said, breathless, rubbing his thumb against Marius' collarbone as he moved. Marius bit his lip, bucked up against him at the praise. "Fffffuck me, you're so gorgeous, fuck—"

"Maybe next time," Marius said, voice low in his chest as he let go and held his hips instead, pulling him closer, harder, while Dixie shifted his weight to one hand and gripped them together instead. "Just like this, in my lap— do you think—"

"God,  _ yes _ ."

They shifted, repositioned, Dixie still on top and Marius welcoming him between his thighs. It wasn't long before Dixie shuddered, his thrusts growing erratic as he spent himself against him, while Marius cooed and stroked at his sides.

He collapsed against him. Marius held him there a while, running a hand over his sweat-slick back and kissing the side of his neck as he caught his breath. He squirmed a little, still unfulfilled and trapped between their bodies, aching… But this was enough. If it ended here, it was enough for now, to have seen the look on his face as he finished. Like Marius was the most incredible thing he'd ever seen, like he was all that mattered.

Even so, he was relieved when it didn't, when Dixie leaned back up and kissed him, touched him, climbed down the length his body spreading breathless kisses over his skin until he reached—

He moaned out loud, grasping at the bedsheets under him and fighting not to buck up into his mouth, until he—

—Until Marius melted back against the pillows, spent and sated, eyes half-open to watch Dixie move to the bathroom and fetch a towel to clean up.

He tucked Marius' head against his chest when he laid back down beside him, under his chin, held him as they talked in hushed tones and drifted. Already making plans for next time, next time, humming little satisfied noises as they relaxed.


	12. Visit Seventeen

Through the glass foyer door he could see Dixie curled on the couch, fast asleep for the evening—waiting up for him? His heart clenched—before he reached for the handle with his free hand. It gave him pause, an idea forming in Marius' head, and he put a finger to his lips and made a shushing gesture at Ori. "Stay, girl," he whispered, and she sat obediently, staring up at him in case it meant a treat. "Good girl. Stay right here."

He turned the door handle slowly and lifted, just slightly, to keep it from clicking as he pushed it open. Tip-toeing at the front of each step, he crept to the couch just as silent as only a trained infiltrator could be, and loomed over him. Dixie was precious when he slept, mouth open and drooling a little on the pillow, arms tucking another tight against his chest. There was just enough room between his chin and the pillow he was clinging to for Marius to gently, oh so gently, deposit the package he'd come to deliver.

Said package sniffed curiously at the new face for just a second, before licking at his chin.

Dixie woke with a start, half sitting up and nearly dislodging the pup, which tumbled over itself and immediately clambered to get close to him again. He looked down at it, puzzled and only half awake, then spotted Marius crouched beside him.

"Surprise," Marius said, grinning. The puppy was making a heroic effort to climb Dixie's shirt and get at his face again, its little tail wagging erratically.

Dixie squinted at him blearily, then looked down at the puppy, one hand automatically going to brace it as it stumbled halfway up his chest, then back at Marius. "What?"

"What, indeed, will you name it, is the question," Marius said, and tapped his thigh to signal Ori to come in through the open door. Her claws clacked on the wooden floor as she meandered over to his side, giving the struggling pup a dubious look.

"What?" Dixie said again.

"Already gave away the other three. This one took a little longer, it— _ he _ , is a runt." He reached out to scratch at the puppy's head as it let out a series of squeals that couldn't quite be called a bark yet, and licked Dixie's chin once more. "I thought you'd, you know. I thought maybe you'd like him."

"A runt?"

Marius shrugged, embarrassed. Saying it out loud, it sounded insensitive. He watched the pup a moment, waiting for Dixie's reaction with his fingers laced tightly together between his knees, anxious.

For his part, Dixie was looking down at the puppy, face unreadable as he lifted it gently with both hands and looked at it. It endeavored to lick his nose, and he brought it closer to his face to let it. "You brought me a runt—for me? To keep?"

"Only if you want," Marius said. "He needs a little more care than the others, but you're good with animals, and I thought maybe you'd…"

There were tears in his eyes when Dixie looked back at him, gently holding the pup against his neck, under his chin, where it squirmed happily and tried to climb onto his shoulder. It took two tries for him to say, "I—I love it. Him?"

"Him. He doesn't have a name yet, we've just been calling him runt," Marius said, scratching idly at Ori's ears as she pushed her head into his lap, perhaps jealous of all the attention. "You can name him whatever you want."

"I'm not really good at coming up with names."

"I don't know. Dixie Greene is a pretty good one, you came up with that yourself, right?"

Dixie nodded, and held the puppy up to look at it again. After a moment, he tried: "Bill?"

Marius stared, disbelieving. "I'm sorry?"

"Bill. Like for William."

"You're—" Marius worked his mouth, desperately trying to suppress a laugh, "You're calling the puppy  _ Bill _ ?"

"What's wrong with that?" Dixie asked, giving him an offended look. It carried less heat with tears still gleaming in his eyes. "It's a good name."

"It's a grown man's name! For a puppy!" The laugh came anyway, despite his best efforts.

"And someday he'll be a grown dog!"

"A grown dog named  _ Bill! _ " Marius said, cackling.

"You said I could name him whatever I wanted!" Dixie said. With his hands full, he reached out with his foot to shove Marius over out of his crouch. "I told you I'm not good at names!"

"And  _ God _ I shouldn't have doubted you," he wheezed, rolling onto his ass on the floor. Ori took it as an invitation for play, climbing half on him to lick at his face. He gently pushed her away. "Okay, okay. Bill it is, poor thing."

"I think it's a good, strong name," Dixie said with a faint smile at the pup, already warming to the idea. "Just like you'll be a good, strong dog. Right, Bill?"

Bill made his best attempt at a high-pitched  _ aroo! _ , still wagging like mad and trying his best to climb all over his new owner and give him every ounce of the vast love a puppy had to give. Dixie cuddled him up under his chin again, laughing, tears rolling freely down his cheeks as he broke into a huge grin that lit up his whole face. Marius' face ached from grinning back, unconscious of it, as he watched them and pet Ori. He'd done something good here. He'd done the right thing.

The two of them deserved each other, Dixie and that dog. They were going to get on just fine.

"Ori started rejecting him," Marius told him as Dixie handled the pup, holding it close still. "He's about seven weeks old, so he's off of milk, but we had to feed him ourselves because she wouldn't have him. They do that sometimes, if they think the runt is too small to survive. Save their energy for the pups that'll make it."

Dixie nodded, a look of heartache crossing his face as he pet Bill's tiny body, one that made Marius' heart clench too. He could imagine how personal such a story must be to him. Part of why he thought Dixie would take to the little thing—and he was right.

"Anything I need to know about rearing him?"

"Just feed him the same as we feed Ori, plenty of meat especially, he's ready to start eating real food. But he's still a little small for his age and may need to be kept warm. Ulysses carried him around in his pocket," he said with a laugh, and saw Dixie's eyebrows raise. "Yes,  _ that _ Ulysses. I think he was more excited about the puppies than the kids were.

"Aside from that, we don't know if he's got any defects, haven't noticed anything. He might've just not gotten what he needed in the womb. But keep an eye out."

"Calamity should be able to help," Dixie said, "if I notice anything's wrong with him." Marius nodded.

Marius moved to close the door, then sat on the couch next to him, Ori having lost interest in them and wandered off to do as she pleased around the house. He pulled from his pocket a length of knotted nylon rope and they played with the puppy between them, little games of tug-o-war or letting him wrestle with their hands. For his size, he was feisty and ready to play fight. Dixie's face must have hurt from grinning so much, but he couldn't seem to stop—Marius' certainly did, watching them. He'd done the right thing, here.

They talked a while about training and how to get Bill to go outside when he was ready—a tricky thing in winter, at his size—and about feeding and care. Dixie absorbed all the information Marius could give him, eyes trained on his new pup, fascinated and determined. He was going to raise it well, Marius was sure of it.

They'd get along just fine.


	13. Visit Twenty Seven

Winter was giving way, slowly, but it was still cold on Mount Charleston, especially at night. Cold enough yet that what was probably the last snow of the season was still sticking, though it had mercifully begun melting off the roads in the day's sun, making the trek up a little less hazardous.

Marius made his way through a sleepy Jacobstown, off the sidewalk trail and around the lodge in the same well worn path that he took every time, that Dixie took every day he visited the town. It cut right through the snow, baring patches of wet earth and stone beneath and showing him the safest places to put his feet as he made his way up the steep incline by clear moonlight.

As always, the fairy lights in Dixie's room were on, leading him through the trees just as much as the path in the snow did. As always, he kicked off what was left on his boots at the door, left his pack and his coat under the stairs, and made his way to the kitchen to put food in Ori's bowl. While he waited for her to finish, he climbed the stairs just to look in and found Dixie fast asleep in the dim light, curled up with the blankets hugged to his chest just like always, Bill fast asleep next to him. And like always, he stood there in the doorframe a minute, just watching him, until it was time to let Ori out one more time for the evening before they were ready to go to sleep. She made herself cozy on the couch when she'd done her business, and he gave her a last pat before he retreated back upstairs, stripping off his clothes on the way to a very welcoming bed. He lifted Bill gently out of his spot and set him on the floor, and reluctantly the growing three-month-old pup made himself cozy before the low fire instead.

Dixie was, at one point, a very light sleeper. He still was, in a way, had probably already woken a little when Marius came in, but then gone back to sleep. And that was the thing of it. Once, he'd snap awake when Marius joined him in bed, sitting up on one elbow as he approached and looking at him, just to be sure. But it was well over a month since they'd slept together, that first time. A month and a half where Marius' visits got longer and more frequent, several nights at a stretch spent in his bed, days too sometimes, and fewer spent out of it. And now Dixie barely stirred as he climbed in beside him and carefully extricated enough of the blankets from his grip to have some for himself. He only blinked an eye open when Marius burrowed in closer, and told him to keep his cold feet to himself, but accepted a kiss goodnight.

Marius lay awake a little while after Dixie had dozed off again in his arms, staring out the window and thinking how much had changed in how little time, with them in each other's lives. How much home this had become, lying in bed next to him, even if he still wandered. A home and a routine he kept coming back to, leaving his armor at the door when he blew in through it.

He laid another kiss on Dixie's nose and hugged him close as he drifted off.

In the morning, he woke briefly before dawn to the feel of Dixie slowly crawling out of his grip. Marius watched with one eye as he sat on the edge of the bed, waking himself up, then turned to watch him back a minute and plant a kiss on his forehead before standing to dress, then leaving to feed and let out the dogs and tend to his livestock. Marius stayed, still tired from the long walk and the long days in the Mojave before that. He lay there, warm and comfortable, listening to the sounds of him moving about outside as he dozed in and out in a soft bed, in a dimly lit room that smelled of Dixie, with a bouquet of dry flowers framed in the pre-dawn light of the window.

And eventually he woke again, as the sun started coming up, to the bed depressing under the weight of Dixie crawling back in behind him. He smiled as he felt kisses on the back of his neck, arms around his middle, and they fell back asleep a while longer.

When the sun was well up and coming bright through the windows he turned and buried his face in Dixie's neck, who said "Morning," in a raspy, sleep-heavy voice and held him close. Neither ready to get up yet, they slipped their hands under each other's clothes and made love as lazily as they knew how, Dixie's breathless murmurs a litany of "I missed you so much." His fingers found a new bruise on his ribs, the last reminder of a fight after a stimpak had done most of the work. He kissed it gently to soothe it when Marius hissed at the touch.

This was the routine, this was what home was, lying damp with sweat and catching his breath with Dixie's head on his shoulder. "I missed you," he said again, and Marius pressed his lips to the top of his head and whispered a  _ Missed you too _ into his hair, even if he hadn't been gone all that long. It was still true.

Dixie toyed with a lock of his dark hair between his fingers as he lay there, drowsy again. It'd be a slow, lazy day, Marius thought. A treat he only got here, a break from everything else. From fighting and running. Here he could lay around all day, get up just for meals, read a book for a while with Dixie's head on his chest listening to the best parts, have sex again if they felt like it, sleep the afternoon away. Talk about everything and nothing.

"Worry about you," Dixie was saying, fingers barely brushing over the bruise. "When you're gone."

"Don't," Marius said, kissing his head again. "I'm okay."

"Not going to lecture you like your mother. I just mean—"

"I know. But I'm okay."

"How do I know that?" Dixie asked, tilting his head up to look at him as he said: "How do I know you'll always come back?"

Marius opened his mouth on a platitude but closed it again, feeling a pain in his chest at the genuine distress in Dixie's eyes. "I promise," was all he could say for a moment.

"But how can you promise that?" Dixie asked, as he allowed Marius to gently pull his head back down onto his chest.

He ran his fingers through his soft hair, grown shaggy and in need of another trim, maybe something to do while he was here this time. "I guess I can't. You just have to trust that I'm fighting as hard as possible to make sure I come back to you every time." He slid his hand down to the fine hairs at the base of his neck, rubbed the tension out of it and felt Dixie melt against him. "Or," he said, softer, "you could come with me."

Dixie was quiet at that for a long time, long enough Marius almost suspected he'd fallen back asleep, his hands still gently rubbing his back and shoulders. At last he asked, barely above a whisper: "How do I know you'll always want me around?"

That ache in his chest came back threefold, and he wrapped his arms around him, holding him tight. "Because you're you," he said, voice husky with emotion. "I could never have enough of you."

"Then why do you always leave?" Dixie sat up to look at him again, arms folded on his chest to support him. "You could just stay here, with me. You know that, right? You could stay, I'd love to have you here all the time. I miss you when you're gone." He frowned. "If you really don't get tired of me. We could do this every day, wake up like this, never say goodbye."

Marius bit his lip, taking a moment to compose himself against the pleading look in his eyes. "It's not about you. I promise it's not about you. I just—"

"You just need to wander," Dixie said, when he couldn't finish the thought. Marius nodded.

"I told you that I don't… think that settling down into a quiet life is for me. Not yet. Still feels like there's too much for me to do, out there, there's… something I need to do, to be myself." He brushed his fingers against Dixie's cheek. "And don't think that that means this is a separate part of my life. This, being with you—I think that's part of me finding that life for myself after the Legion. It's just… not the whole thing. I still need…"

"Conflict?" Dixie suggested. Marius shook his head, stopped, shrugged a little.

"Maybe. I still feel like I need to… do something."

"Living quietly doesn't meet that need? Honest work out here, with me?"

"No," Marius admitted, reluctantly. "I don't know what it is I want and need, but it's more than I can find here. To be whoever, whatever I am on my own. Hey," he said, when Dixie glanced down. "I'm telling you, it's not about you. You're… I think you're a big part of what I've needed. You're part of what makes me feel like I'm—I'm living my own life. Like I've found something for myself that the Legion and my mother didn't have any say in. Just because I'm, just… I'm missing something else in myself, that doesn't mean that you're not enough. Of—of what you are to me. You are."

Nodding a little, Dixie turned his head to nuzzle into the hand Marius touched to his cheek, planted a kiss on his palm. "I could use your help," Marius said. "Out there. Finding whatever it is I'm looking for. I'd welcome the extra eyes, and the company. I'd love to have you with me. If you wanted to go."

"I don't know," Dixie sighed, eyes closed, cheek resting in Marius' palm. "I like it here. I like the quiet. Had enough conflict and struggle in my life, found a place I feel like I belong, in Jacobstown." He opened his eyes and looked at him sadly. "And with you. In a perfect world, for me, you'd stay and we could live like this forever."

"Maybe someday," Marius said, threading the fingers of his other hand through one of Dixie's where it rested on his chest. "I'm not ready for that yet. I'm sorry. But I'll always come back, and you'll always have a place with me, wherever I go. Any time you want to take it."

"And you'll always have a place here. Whenever you come back. Whenever you decide to stay." He leaned down for a kiss, and between that one and the next Marius promised to think about it, just as he asked Dixie to think about his own proposal.  _ Just think about it _ , he said, tasting his lips again. Whether either of them would or wouldn't, they had something here in the time they were together that he wouldn't trade for anything.

Even if he couldn't stay for long.

But he'd always come back.


	14. Visit Thirty

Something was wrong.

Marius sensed it in his gut as soon as he reached the edge of the clearing, the grey, hazy afternoon clouds adding an ominous dull cast over the whole scene. Something was wrong here, but it took a moment to resolve what: the silence.

The animals were gone. No hen pecked around behind the fence, no bighorners grazed on the spring grasses around the cabin. No Bill ran down the porch steps, yapping his little head off to greet them. The bedroom window upstairs was dark for the first time he’d seen since his first arrival, Dixie’s string lights turned out. The whole house was dark, and too quiet.

He crouched among the lower branches at the edge of the clearing, heart pounding as he listened for anything out of the ordinary—anything other than the unnatural stillness—and looked for any unusual tracks in the soft wet earth. The animals, and Dixie, had been through recently, heading into the woods, down towards Jacobstown. But why?

Marius looked back to the house, debating whether to follow the tracks or investigate here first. Circling around the edge of the clearing, he approached the cabin from the corner, trying to keep out of sight of the windows, with Ori close on his heels. When he reached the edge of the deck he looked down at her, but she seemed calm working her nose after the animal tracks with her tail wagging idly.

Gesturing for her to stay and moving as quietly as he knew how, Marius climbed up the wooden supports and vaulted over the deck railing, landing with a soft clap of boots on wood. He put his shoulder to the corner of the outer wall and peered around through the dining room windows, watching for movement in the dim. Nothing. No sign of Dixie, nor anyone else. The jukebox in the dining room was off, giving no soft music to the house as Dixie often left it when he puttered around. No smell of recent cooking from the kitchen beyond. Quickly, he strafed past the window towards the glass front of the foyer and did the same, peeking in for any motion in the room beyond, then up to what he could see of the loft. No movement in the dim. He turned his eyes to the stairs as he reached for the door handle, and paused.

There he was. Sitting on the stairs, Bill panting happily next to him, Dixie watched Marius with an amused smile. Marius pushed the door open and whispered, “What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Just watching you play secret agent out there. You’re good at it.”

Marius flushed and crossed his arms. Dixie was sitting on the landing in his coat and boots, a bag packed at the foot of the stairs. He was dressed in his nicer clothes: one of those breezy, gauzy shirts he wore that bared half his chest; comfortable, baggy gray pants tucked into short brown leather boots; neck adorned with jewelry, short black hair recently combed. He had a leather belt around his hips from which hung a heavy, well-made machete, and cloth wraps tied neatly around his hands. Clearly, he was prepared to go out.

“What happened to your animals?” Marius asked slowly, looking at the bag packed at his feet. Well stocked, by all appearances, with a blanket rolled atop it and strapped down tight, a canteen ready to go in a side pouch. His stomach twisted with dread.

“I returned them to Grandmother Lily. I don’t know how long I’ll be gone—probably some time. Someone has to look after them while I’m away, can’t just leave them here.”

Marius’ heart sank. “Where are you going?”   
  
“You tell me.”

Marius blinked as he processed, eyes widening, but before he could say anything Dixie went on: “I think you need someone out there to watch your back. Poor Ori has a full time job and she’s just one dog. Bill and I can take some of the responsibility off her shoulders. And I could stand to get out of the house, see the world again.” He drummed his hands on his knees, looking down a little as he added: “Besides, I miss you when you’re gone. And I worry. This way I’m there to make sure you come back safe every time.

“If the offer still stands,” he finished. “If you’ll still have me. Think you could stand having me around all the time?” He slowly raised his eyes, looking at Marius under his brows with an expression that only barely dared hope, but… 

Marius stood frozen, hands at his sides. It took two tries to open his mouth and say something, one hand going automatically to his hair just to stop. What was there to say to that?

Nothing. Nothing at all. He clicked his mouth shut and decided he’d have to show him instead.

He strode forward, bent to grab Dixie around the waist and lift him off his feet. Marius leaned up to kiss him and caught his neck first, then his jaw, his cheek, the corner of his open, laughing mouth. Dixie’s legs wrapped around his waist to support himself, they stayed like that a long moment as they kissed, giggling into each other’s mouths. Bill bounced up on his back legs to paw at Marius’ hip and bark at all the commotion.

“It would be my honor to have for as long as you’ll have  _ me _ ,” Marius said as they separated, leaning back to look up into his eyes. Dixie wrapped his arms around his neck, smiling down at him, face aglow with joy. “I will do my level best to give you the world.”


End file.
